a new advent tradition...

So, our girls continue to be excited about the little pieces of chocolate in their advent calendars, most mornings they ask me to take pictures before they will eat them. And anything that is exciting to them, is exciting to me, especially something that will have them flying out of bed in the morning!

 
I kept thinking though, that there has to be something more than just a small piece of chocolate that connects them to the true meaning and excitement of Christmas.

 

It was during the first week of December while we were reading one of our favorite stories, A Gift From St. Nicholas, that I came across a line in the book that made me think that I really need do more to direct the girls excitement to the birth of Jesus, not just a daily treat. Don't get me wrong, we love the fun chocolate calendars and won't give them up until the girls outgrow them {which I hope is never!}

 
In the story, there is a little girl asking St. Nicholas if there is such a person as Santa Claus, and does he give her the Christmas gifts under the tree. Nicholas responds by saying: "Be careful with your questions, lest you get the wrong reply; instead of asking who brings gifts, perhaps you might ask why." I know the girls understand that the true celebration of Christmas is that we are celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But how much of their excitement is about that, and how much is just about more worldly {present related} excitements?

 
They are still "babies" and of course I want them to be excited about receiving gifts on Christmas morning, but I also want them to be excited about giving gifts, and truly understanding why we give gifts in the first place ~ because God gave us his Son! At the same time I was trying to think of something creative to do with the girls, I saw this great idea on someone's blog. We put our own spin on the idea, and here's what we came up with...

 
I have these ornament templates that I use with my kindergarten class, so I printed out 7 ornaments for each of our girls. {we got a little bit of a late start this year, so I only needed 21 ornaments instead of 25} Without telling the girls what we were going to do with them, I asked them to decorate them anyway they like. When they were done, I wrote a Bible verse on the back of each one. They ranged from verses that talk about the impending birth of Jesus, to ones they have had as memory verses in church, to ones that they probably weren't familiar with. But I did make it a point to choose verses that they could connect to.

 
Each night before bed, we open one of the ornaments that I have wrapped in tissue. One girls gets to open it, one gets to read it, and one gets to hang it on the garland going up the steps. We try to spend a little time talking about the verse and what it means to them. This has gone better some nights than others. We have had those evenings where everyone wants to argue over who gets which job, and they all want to talk at the same time. Even the little troubles aside, I can already tell this has been valuable to them. In fact as I type this, Rebekah is standing next to me, holding up an angel from our nativity saying, "Joe-sup are you up here? Good news, great joy for all people." After Christmas, I'm thinking of mounting the ornaments on cute scrapbook paper and keeping them in a book to look at from year to year.

 
We also bought this kid-friendly nativity and storybook on clearance right after Christmas last year. It's called What God Wants For Christmas.

 
It's a cute story narrated by the angel Gabriel, with a box to open each day that has a character to add to the nativity scene. It's complete with a fun little surprise on the final day in box number seven.

 
The girls have loved it, although you can see from the pics, that Rebekah is very protective of all the little boxes and the characters within. Fun ways to share the joy of Christmas.

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