The First Day of Christmas!

It's time to put away our thankful turkey, and get out the Christmas decorations. Every year Christmas is more fun. The kids are older. They can understand more and more why we celebrate. I think this is the first time we'll make it a month long Advent celebration. Normally I'm so far behind I don't even think about Christmas until a week or two before. This month I really tried hard to have things ready for December 1st. And already the kids are in the Christmas spirit. Here are a few of the traditions we're trying to start (or continue).

One of the blogs I get a lot of fun ideas from is TeachMama. She had a great idea for an Advent Activity Calendar. It is a calendar that has one special activity for each of the 24 days of Advent. She posted her template for people to download and then I just changed it up for our family. I'm so excited about it. I have a Veggie Tales felt Advent calendar that I got on clearance after Christmas last year and it will work great. I cut up the calendar and put a piece into each square. The boys will take turns picking out the activity for the day. The activities range from cutting down our Christmas tree, baking Christmas cookies, going to the store to pick out gifts to donate to Brother Bills, watching a Christmas DVD, picking out a gift for each other and Sora (I think they are finally old enough to do it this year) driving around the neighborhood to look at light, having snowman pancakes for breakfast and a lot more fun things.

Last year was the first year we did a Jesse Tree. We printed out these pictures to make the ornaments. I saved them and we're going to use them again. Maybe when the kids are older we can make some nicer versions. I got a book a few years ago with all of the devotionals and we're reading one each night and then putting the corresponding ornament on the tree (once we have it).

I read about this tradition in a few places and know people who do it (or various versions). I wrapped 24 different Christmas books - one for each day of Advent. Each night the kids will take turns picking and opening a book for us to read. Since we don't actually own enough of them I got some from the library. We're saving "T'was the Night before Jesus" for Christmas Eve. (Unfortunately, I only had one roll of wrapping paper. I think it would have been more fun had I wrapped them all differently. Hopefully the kids won't mind too much.)

Another fun idea I've read about is wrapping each item in a nativity scene and then opening one each night. Still trying to decide if we'll do this one.

We're definitely doing a birthday cake for Jesus. I want to make a "teachable" cake. I like this idea. And this one And this one. Maybe I'll just use a little bit of all of them.

I really love the World Vision Gift catalog. On Christmas Eve the kids will each pick out a gift for our family to give. We did this last year but I hope they (especially Orin) can understand the significance even more.

I have a couple of fun tradition books ghat I really like. "The ADVENTure of Christmas" has some great ideas for teachable moments during all of the Christmas activities (putting up the tree, giving gifts, lights, candy canes.) I found this other one at the library but I think I'm going to try to get a copy. It's called, "The Book of New Family Traditions." It not only has great ideas for Christmas traditions, but for all holidays, plus other ideas for fun family traditions. I can't wait to use more.

It's so hard to have a balance when it comes to Christmas. People seem to go to extremes...either focusing too much on the commercialism of the season or going the other way and just having a negative attitude about it. Obviously, I want my kids to focus on the real reason. But knowing how to do that is the hard part. We can't get rid of gifts all together. But maybe if I can help them have a good attitude with it comes to "getting" gifts (and not just wanting more and more stuff) I think we can somehow give the them right heart when it comes to giving.

I love how excited they have been to open a book each night.

They've had so much fun playing with the nativity scenes. Especially the Veggie Tales one. One minute they are having Junior tell all of the rest of the figures how Jesus was born and that he is so excited and the next minute Junior is crying because everyone has been destroyed by an attack. They are such boys.

It was fun to pull out some of the crafts we made last year.

And just for fun, here is a picture of our thankful turkey. They kids really loved doing it. There were nights that Damien and I forgot about it but the kids reminded us. It was fun to hear the things they came up with.