Advent

We are counting down the days till Christmas!

And, as the days tick away, do you know what Will is most excited about? Adding the donkey to our Nativity Scene when Mary & Joseph arrive. ;-) Haha! He even took the donkey and the cow from the stable for his Show-and-Tell day at school as "something that reminds him of Christmas".

When I was a kid, my mom used to get these Advent candles for the month of December where we'd burn the candle down one number during dinner each night. It's so simple, but I remember thinking it was soooo exciting and such a novelty. This year I found an Advent candle at Magic Cabin and I was so excited to start this tradition with the kids. (I think I'm going to buy another one for next year now that they're on sale!) So we've been having dinner by candlelight every night. :) And the kids are taking turns blowing it out... which, of course, is a big deal and honor for them.

On the other side, there is a picture of Santa in his sleigh with the reindeer pulling him and the further we burn down, the closer we get to Santa too.

But my favorite Advent activity that we are doing is our book countdown. I bought and wrapped 24 new books for the kids (a substantial part of their Christmas gifts from us) and they take turns unwrapping one every night after dinner (or sometimes after bath). We read them together and they LOVE this ritual! So do I.

I think next year I will get cute with numbering them. This year, they're just picking at random.

This is the day we were going to Greenfield Village so we opened and burned our candle at lunch time instead.

Will read some of this book while Sophie finished eating.

A couple times, we've had evening plans and then they both opened a book the following night instead.

Here's our stack so far. I'll do a follow up of our complete list later. Most of them were from our library favorites list. A few were recommendations from others that we hadn't read before and I'm very pleased with those too.