Christmas Season Begins

On Saturday, we volunteered to ring the bell at Lehman’s as a family.  Jeremy and Madison took the first hour shift.  Ellie and I came for the second hour to relieve them.  Both girls did a great job standing in one place for so long.  I should have brought a camera, but didn’t.  So, you’ll just have to imagine how cute they were!

After ringing the bell, they used the remaining amount of their gift cards at Lehman’s to purchase a gift for themselves.  They both ended up getting a lego set to play with – Madison got Stephanie’s New Lamb and Ellie got a Farm set with tractors.  They have played with these a lot for the last three days.

Also on Saturday, we pulled out our Christmas tree.  Instead of going to get a real tree, we set up a tree farm with our artificial branches.  (I figure the girls get a few math skills in when they have to help sort them out by color!)  They were very helpful with putting the tree up. 

    

That evening,  I worked on making our advent calendar.  (Yep, Jeremy is starting to call me Martha Stewart with all my craftiness lately!)  I got the idea off of Pinterest for the calendar, the activities, and the scripture.  (I would give you the original links, but my Pinterest profile is non-functioning right now, so you will just have to be inspired by my stuff.)

The calendar – Cut toilet paper rolls in half, glue together in whatever shape you want, fill with desired things (candy, activity and verse for me), and wrap both sides:

          

A few things on this… You could hang it, and it would be cuter.  I didn’t take the time to do that.  I would use a sturdier wrapping paper next time because mine is so cheap and thin.  The blog suggested wrapping candies in foil so they don’t slide out and slide to the bottom of the tree; so, I did that.  It is not that easy to wrap, but I am not the best wrapper either.  It takes a little planning to put the numbers in the right spot and the activities coordinated.  I made a map of my tree to help me when filling it.

So, the insides are filled with leftover Halloween candy; I was going to use Christmas kisses, but never made it to the store.  I guess, this gives them variety and uses up candy – win-win! 

They also have a scripture verse for each day that I found online.  I think next year, I would just split up the Christmas story in Luke into enough sections to go all 24 days. 

Finally, they have an activity a day.  I did coordinate this to the day I actually think we will have time to do it.  Or, in the case of “attend a Nutcracker ballet” and similar ones, a planned event had to be on that day.  You can find the list of activities and scripture that we are using here. 

I still need to make our ornaments today.  We’ll see if we get that done before or after supper!  I am hoping this calendar provides a spiritaul focus to our holiday season.  I also hope it helps us find ways to do things as a family – both big and little.  And as a side benefit, I figure it could help me keep on track with everything – holiday cards, Christmas cookies, giving treats to the neighbors, etc. 

I pray that you may use this Advent season to draw closer to Jesus as His birth draws near.  As we learned during moments with children on Sunday, we have a period of waiting (Advent) that helps us prepare our hearts for the birth of our Savior.