Counting down the days to Christmas!

It's December!!! This month always seems to fly by because there is something going on everyday...well, of course there's schooling. We have activities with church, families, and friends. Don't get me wrong. Although, it is a busy time, I really enjoy most everything we do (shopping not so much...online shopping this year!). I love the enthusiasm that my kids are experiencing especially when it comes to helping others during this time. I love visiting with friends and family...sharing meal or just cookies and a chat. I love the togetherness that happens during the holidays. 


We are doing our Advent Calendar of activities again this year. I made this last year and inside each little box (made from holiday cards that we have received from years past) is a little treat for each of the kids and an activity that we will do that day. Here is a list of most of the activities that we are planning to do this year give or take a few. I change things around as needed. But unlike years past where I will just "modify" on the spot, this year, I have to actually have the correct paper in the box because a certain someone is starting to read a bit ;)

Buy Christmas tree and decorate
Make a Christmas craft
Bake cookies with friends
Drive around and see Christmas lights
Watch The Christmas Story Movie
Play a family game
Sit by the fire, drink hot chocolate, and read Christmas stories
Open stocking
Celebrate the reason for the season with friends with a Happy Birthday Jesus party
Visit Santa Claus
Make a gingerbread house
Stuff, stamp, and mail our Christmas cards
Watch a Christmas play
Eat snowman pancakes for dinner
Write a letter to Santa
Make Christmas cards 
Bake a birthday cake for Jesus
Make ornaments for our tree
Take a candlelit bubble bath
Have a dinner picnic under the Christmas tree
Stuff stockings for kids in need
Help Mommy wrap presents
Go caroling
Listen to Christmas music and dance
Go to Stone Mountain
Ride a Christmas train
Go ice skating
Visit a live nativity

We added a Jesse Tree this year, too. I heard about it from a friend at church and was very interested so I did some of my own research. I wanted to refocus this Christmas on the reason for this season- Jesus! If you have never heard of the Jesse Tree or want to know more about it, I have compiled a few resources  that I am using or have found interesting. Some include printables.


A Holy Experience
Tired Need Sleep
a Dolce Vita

The Voice

Simple Mom

Catholic Culture

Reformed Church of America

E-pie graciously donated her little tree to become our Jesse Tree.

Day one ornament

We are also doing the Elf on the Shelf. We started last year or maybe it was 2 years ago...I can't quite remember. E-pie named him Dopey since she was really into Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He is not a mischievious elf. He just hides in different places each night...Except when we forget to move him the night before and tell the kids that he must really like that spot since he came back to it after visiting Santa.

Hiding in the barn...E-pie tells us, "I have good news and I have bad news...good news is I found Dopey. Bad news is  he is in our toy."

Dopey heard us reminiscing about one of E-pie's first ornament from her grandparents so he decided to show us he was listening... 

I have read 2 posts regarding Christmas and Santa that I really like:
The Christmas Conundrum by Jen Hatmaker


The Truth About Santa
But, I really don't want to take away from the magic of Christmas because my kids will not be at this stage of believing for very long. I think if we keep our focus on Jesus and not the commercialization of Christmas, we can also keep the magic of Christmas.


Anywho...hoping this season is one filled with joy for you and your family. Our Christmas cards have arrived. I have hopes that they will be mailed out before the New Year ;)
Coming Soon...I will be posting our Annual Christmas letter online this year!


Blessings,
H


PS My links are broken somewhere and not sure how to fix it. Sorry if they are not working for you.

New Traditions...

So this year, as we get ready to prepare for celebrating the birth of Christ, we are going to try our hands at some new traditions. First, there's the Advent calendar, something that hubby and I are not very familiar with. I have heard about them and seen some but have never done anything with them. Hubby thought I was making up the word and could only think of the Advent brand bottles everytime I said it. But he was supportive as I suggested (demanded) that we recycle our old Christmas cards to make origami boxes that would hold the activity and treat for the day. There are LOTS of cute and wonderful ideas out there. I just Googled Advent calendar ideas until I found something that I liked and could do in a reasonable amount of time with what I had. I found the idea for the origami box at Crafty Nest but just set up differently.

Crafty Nest

My creation

What's in box #5?

I put velcro on the boxes so I could move them around if necessary.  I searched around for things to do and came up with some of our own based on what we had available near us. Here are the list of things that we will be doing this December:

• It’s time to get our Christmas tree!
• Let’s decorate our house and our tree!
• Let’s write a letter to Santa!
• Watch a winter ballet show (E-pie has a ballet recital)
• Make an ornament
• Collect warm clothes to donate to others
• Watch puppet show (at the library)
• Mail out Christmas cards
• Play a Wii game together as a family
• Let’s go ice skating today!
• Time to bake some cookies!
• Let’s bake more cookies to share with our friends and family!
• Let’s go see some Christmas lights!
• Meet Santa Claus
• Special shopping trip with Daddy :)
• Let’s watch special holiday movie.
• Listen to Christmas music and dance!
• Make a gingerbread house!
• Read some Christmas books and drink hot chocolate.
• Time to wrap presents for our friends and family.
• Let’s have a playdate and have a servants’ heart as we do something for someone else.
• Take a walk in the park
• Ride a merry-go-round
• It’s time to open our stockings!
• Remember the Lord today and give thanks for all our blessings that we already have in each other.

The second thing we are doing is the Advent paper chain idea from Spell Outloud, a homeschooling mom of 6! She's got some great ideas on her site. Makes me excited to homeschool :D It's funny. I decided to make this (actually 2 copies so that C-bear will get to tear off a chain, too) and E-pie brings one home from school that she had made. We will hang her school one in her room to tear off at night after prayer. We will tear off the one I made in the morning for our morning scripture reading together.

Inspired by the lesson we discussed in our Sunday school class this past Sunday about remembering to praise God for our many blessings and to help be a blessing to others this holiday season, I decided to do something different with our kids' holiday party. For the past 2 years, a few friends and I have gotten our kids together to play and do secret santa. This year, instead of getting together to get more gifts, I thought it would be a great idea to show our kids how blessed we are and to be a blessing to others. The children will be the ones stuffing the stockings for our church's Project Kids Eat Ministry. We will still do a small book exchange but the emphasis will be on serving others. I'm really excited about it!

We will be bringing our little Elf on the Shelf back out again...E-pie named him Dopey last year. Hopefully, we will be on top of changing his location every night.

found our perfect fat tree :)

Hope I can keep up with everything.
I will let you know how everything goes ;)
Might  not be making homemade Christmas cards this year for the first time in  5 years. Might :O
I hope everyone is enjoying all the festivities of this special holiday season!

~ H