Last year my oldest daughter and youngest daughter and I attended our first homeschool historical ball and it was a fun and memorable night!   In fact, it was so much fun that this year our entire family was able to attend on Saturday evening, Nov. 15. 
 
What is a homeschool historical ball you may ask???

It's a fun event for homeschooled teens and their families.  Young ladies are required to wear formal period costumes (medieval to WWII).  Everyone else could wear formal period costume or formal attire.  All costumes and behavior have to be modest.  The ball we attended was about an hour away from our home and last weekend's ball was the 8th annual event hosted by a homeschool group in a nearby county.  There was a small fee to get into the ball with a family cap price (our family met that cap! :) ) Each family was asked to bring finger foods (we brought grapes and cookies) while the organizers provided some main dishes that could be eaten with no utensils.  (tiny sandwiches, cut-up wraps, fruit/veggie platters/cookies/cupcakes).

Here is our family at the ball.  My girls were all wearing dresses that we borrowed from a few friends and my gentlemen were in their nice slacks and ties.  I just wore a long skirt, blouse and scarf.

About 130 adults, young adults, and children smiled, laughed and danced from 5:00-10:00PM.  The dance was held at a church's hall and the decorations were so beautiful!  Like last year, I just loved seeing all the beautiful dresses (that many of the young ladies made themselves!) and it was just so nice and refreshing to see young men and women dressed modestly dancing with one another, smiling and laughing.    The music was provided by a great group of musicians who instructed the dancers on what to do.

Here are some highlights from a fun-filled family night:
I love the picture above on the left of my daughter in the blue dress being swung by my husband during one of the dances.

The picture above on the left is a picture of the stage with the musicians and the picture on the right is my son and daughter going down the line during the "Virginia Reel" dance. 

Oh I will never forget the excitement of my oldest daughter and the many other dancers when the band announced the last dance of the night, the "Virginia Reel!"  Kids and adults of all ages were giddy, excited, and running to the dance floor!  It is a crowd favorite, especially with this historical ball!

Here is a clip of my oldest daughter and son dancing the Virginia reel that my husband captured on his iPhone:


And here is my other daughter in the blue dress dancing with a partner (who she just met at the dance).  The dance got faster and faster before it was all over!  Lots of fun!  

For today's Thankful Thursdays Link-Up, I'm thankful for fun family times, like the Homeschool Historical Ball!  Creating memories and fun with our family is one of the many reasons I homeschool my children as homeschooling allows us to experience unique and fun-filled opportunities, such as the ball!









Please visit other thankful posts below and if you have a thankful post you want to add to the Link-Up, please add below!

For this week's 7 Quick Takes hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary, I'm combining the Friday's Quick Takes with things I'm thankful for since each Thursday in November is themed "Thankful Thursdays", which is hosted by Tammy at Creative K Kids.  I'm also linking up to Lisa's "My Week in Review" at Home to 4 Kiddos.

St. Lucy -- Patron Saint of eyes -- eye candy

Another great resource we love is the Holy Heroes website which has an Advent Adventure for families.  It is free to sign  up and each day our family gets an email with the next day's adventure lesson.  My children love to watch the children on the videos and hear the Bible stories and history of Advent.  Holy Heroes also has a Lenten Adventure in preparation for Christ's resurrection at Easter.  We participated in the Lenten Adventure for the first time this past year and we are enjoying our first Advent Adventure so far.   Holy Heroes is a great and fun resource and our family has learned so much together as a family about our Catholic faith with Holy Heroes!

So if you are looking for another great way to enhance your Advent season with your family, check out the Holy Heroes website and enjoy your adventure!

I am thankful for Holy Heroes and for my friend A.R. for reminding me that Holy Heroes is definitely a great website to share with others who visit my blog! 

We will also be decorating our Jesse Tree and reading scripture as our children put on one symbol per night on our "tree" (which is a branch we found in our woods in a pot covered with purple cloth).  Our symbols are made out of paper and our children colored each picture. I then laminated them and punched a hole to tie a string to the paper.  I made copies of these symbols from this page on Domestic-Church.com  . We have enjoyed reading The Jesse Tree by Geraldine McCaughrean in years past and we will continue with this tradition this year.  We read one story each night which relates to the Jesse Tree and its symbols. 

If you are like me, you may have a lots of Christmas books that you have collected through the years.   A few years ago I found a great way to read our religious and secular Christmas books and at the same time have my children anticipate Jesus' birthday.  I wrap up each book with purple wrapping paper.  I usually find the purple paper in our local Dollar Tree store.  Then beginning on Dec. 1st, one child opens one book and we read it as a family.  Then on Dec. 2, our next child opens a book and so on.  My children really love this idea of opening their Advent Christmas book.  I have a small "Advent tree" in our great room decorated with purple balls and under this tree is where we have our wrapped Christmas books.  This small Advent tree goes up at the beginning of Advent and then we buy our real Christmas tree sometime later in December.   
I also number the books and put each child's name on the back of the wrapping paper so I don't have to remember who gets to unwrap the next book!
The season of Advent is such a special time and I am thankful that our family celebrates the true meaning of Christmas by doing several fun and meaningful Advent activities to prepare for the day when we can sing "Happy Birthday to Jesus!"