Advent Season- Day 1

I've had several people ask me what we do for Advent in our home, so I thought I'd share that with you. We do a few things around here... some smaller, and some more significant. For the small traditions, Kaden has a paper chain which helps him count down to Christmas. Nothing major or creative, but he loves it anyway. We also have one of the traditional chocolate Advent calendars. I had those growing up, and it's neat to have Kaden look forward to his piece of chocolate each day just like I did when I was growing up.

We have 2 other more significant Advent traditions around here. The first is the Christmas book basket. I have accumulated a lot of Christmas books over the years, and wanted to find a way to get Kaden to take time to look at all of them and show interest in them. Each year I choose 25 books out of my Christmas book stash and wrap them up. Each night Kaden gets to choose a book, unwrap it, and that becomes his bedtime story for the night. It's a simple thing that gets Kaden excited about reading the books (he enjoys reading books anyway, so this adds to the fun), he gets to open a present, it doesn't cost me any money (okay, 1 roll of wrapping paper I got on sale for 66 cents), and it avoids an argument at bedtime over which book we're going to read. One book in the basket is wrapped in a special bag (which I had to sew of course), and that is saved for Christmas day.

Our Christmas book basket

Basket with the special book bag for Christmas Day

Kaden opening his first book on day one. The book he chose for Advent day #1 was: Who is coming to our house?

The second more significant tradition is our Advent tree. Each day on the calendar has a special activity to do. People choose to count down to Christmas in a variety of ways, and I chose to treat it like an actual calendar- starting at 1 and going to 25. So #1 is actually December 1, rather than 1 day left until Christmas. To keep you in suspense a bit, I decided to post each day about what activities we're doing from our calendar.

Day 1: Decorate the Christmas Tree

We were going to let Kaden put up all the ornaments, and then leave them where he put them (at the bottom half of the tree of course), but then he wanted his mom and dad to help, so the ornaments got a bit more balanced all over the tree. :)

Concentrating as he put the ornaments on the tree

Makenna enjoyed the decorating from her swing

Mommy and Maya observing the decorating

Maya, clearly enthused.

Are we done yet, guys? I'm tired.

Come back every day from now until Christmas to see what Advent activities we do from our Advent tree, and to see what books we're reading. I'm not going to link my blog to FB for all of these posts because I don't want to fill up your newsfeed, so if you're interested in the activities, you'll have to remember to check back. I look forward to sharing our traditions with you this Christmas season.