So this Christmas season Clay and I wanted to add some traditions to our family and keep old ones going. Growing up my family had many traditions...I LOVE traditions! One of the things we did was an advent calendar. Some friends from church told me that each day in December leading up to Christmas their kids would pull an activity out (ours was a little calendar with pockets) of something and do the "advent" for the day. I was a little intimidated becuse with 4 kids just about everything is a task, but I really wanted to make this season about memories and joy and not just busyness. I wrote up a list of things to do each day. Some were simple, like make a christmas craft or read the Christmas story. Others were a little bigger like go to Sea World or go to the Nutcracker (I've gone every year since I was 2). One of the "advents" was one when we were at my parents. Every night my mom puts a little surprise under the kids pillows to play with as they fall asleep. On this night she put the rudolph nose under their pillows with a note that said to "put on your rudolph nose, grab some eggnog and jump in the car to go hunt Christmas lights. It was so fun and as you can see Cole and Cooper fell asleep on the hunt! All in all it was a wonderful tradition that I can't wait to do next year. Here is the slidwshow of some of the highlights of our season. I'm so blessed to be a part of this crazy family. It is so tiring, but such a joy to watch these little people learn and grow. Christmas in this house was busy (anything we do is busy =) but it was so special. I loved every morning whe the kids woke up...they would run downstairs find Elfie (our elf on the shelf) and then go grab the "advent" for that day, bring it to me and wait in anticipation to see what the activity would be. I'll hopefully get to posting about our actual Christmas before the summer!
