The Best Time of the Year...

This year I was so excited to experience Christmas with two little boys. There's something about a baby's first Christmas that is just so much fun. And I knew this was going to be a really fun year with Tyler. The first year he would "get" Christmas and what it is all about. And that being said, it was really important to me that our focus was on the true meaning. That every single day we talked about Jesus and what his birth, his life and his death mean to us. I had a lot of ideas. I did some Pinterest searching and came up with some of my own and had way too many to actually do. So here are the three things I narrowed it down to. And they were great. I think they will be forever traditions at our house for the month of December.

Advent Candle:
After dinner every night we lit our candle(s) and read a Bible story that led up to the birth of Jesus. Then Tyler got to blow them out at the end. His favorite part, of course.

Names of God:
This one didn't quite get started. I got the idea from someone else's blog just a day or two before December 1 and they took awhile to make. So I still hung them, but that's kind of all. Next year we will draw one each night (December 1-25) and read the verse that goes with it before we hang it up.

Christmas Jar:
This was a fun one. We wrote out 25 fun family activities on craft sticks and put them in the jar. This was to make sure we were really focusing our time and attention on our family even in the midst of the busy and craziness that comes with Christmas. Tyler got to draw one every morning. They said things like make Christmas cookies, make a Christmas card for some one, drive around on a Christmas light hunt, make hot chocolate, watch a Christmas movie... So much fun! But next year I'm going to assign them to a day so the kids are surprised, but I have a little control over what gets drawn. Rookie mistake.

This was the night he drew, 'Have a picnic by the fireplace.'

 

It has been so much fun creating new traditions as a family. And we all loved the ones we started this year. And I hope the boys will have great memories of them someday. :-)