Advent

On November 30th we set up the tree and the littles "helped" by unwinding the lights and making sure they worked. Mama always puts up all the lights on the tree, the cranberry garland and the red ribbon first, but all we had time to do this night was get the lights put up. Their helping actually made it go much slower than normal, but they were having a great time lighting each other, making light crowns and getting them even more tangled in the process. Eben, Kivi and Jasper were busy Heelying down the driveway in the freezing cold with Dada.

I stayed up too late that night getting all the advents ready for the next morning. This year we have five advents because Pella is now old enough to take part in our little tradition which meant we had to add one more. So every morning the kids take turns doing a different advent activity. We made up a calendar so everyone knows what to do on what day.

Here are all of our 2013 advents:

Lighting the Advent candles and reading the scriptures:

 This is the second year we've done Advent with our family for Christmas. We use the book A Family Advent and love it. It keeps all the kids attention, has scripture to read each day, a fun fact about Christmas, a little devotion and activity suggestions.

Putting a nativity character on the calendar:

 Picking a candy cane off the candy cane wreath:

Picking a sock, which is filled with candy, (this is the favorite) from the railing:

Turing on the Christmas tree lights:

Waiting and being happy for your siblings who get to do an advent activity:

 The first day of December Opal had to wait and she did an amazing job! It's been a little harder for Berg and Pella to take their turns waiting.