My favorite, of course, are the stockings. I've been working on this for awhile. I bought the mini-stockings at an after-Christmas sale for a dime apiece in 2010, I think. In 2011, I was too tuckered out with a big belly and new baby to do anything about it. In 2012, I finally got my act together. The beauty of the "stockings" concept, instead of a similar little house with doors, etc., is that you can fit a buncha stuff in the stockings. This year, the stockings have a piece of candy for Wesley, an ornament for our cool gingerbread house tree, and an activity to do. In the future, I can have two pieces of candy for both kids, scriptures to read, puzzle pieces (I tried to do a puzzle this year, but the one I bought had pieces too big to fit in the stocking! oops!), etc. The possibilities are endless.
I "scrapped" the numbers 1-24, which was fun and all but they've been ripped to shreds by my children. Many of the little embellishments have fallen off. The duct-tape on the windowsill is pretty hokey too. Oh well, we're learning here.
The gingerbread tree is really cool. I love it. There are only 17 ornaments though, luckily we've missed a couple days so it's no biggie (I'm surprised that Wesley totally forgets to check the stockings), but I need to be on the lookout for 7 more ornaments to make a set of 24. I want them to look similar to the ones we have though, so we'll see.
Similarly, since he forgets to check, there have been days when we didn't do an "activity." I wracked my brain to come up with 24 decent activities, but a bunch of them we didn't even do. It's OK I guess, I'm stressed enough and I will survive if we don't make it to the Gingerbread Houses downtown this year. There's always next year. So far we've done things like make snowflakes (fail... he struggles with scissors), buy a new Christmas CD and listen to it, go to a Christmas party, take Christmas treats to our neighbors, eat birthday cake with Laurel, etc. I keep a bunch of them on the counter, and the night before or the morning of I stuff the activity into the day's stocking, since at that point I know what I can be capable of that day. It's worked really well and been fun.
Before Wesley can eat his candy, we have to read our Christmas scripture and Christmas story, which came to us from Uncle Kurt and Aunt Melani and their family....
The stories are cute and the scriptures are perfect. I'm glad I finally settled on the "rule" of "read your scriptures, THEN eat candy." That has helped a lot :-)
Another fun advent came from Aunt Leslie and Uncle Brad.... aweeeeesome!! She "scrapped" this too, and it's stinking adorable. They are cards with magnets on the back, over a mini-muffin tin (which is also awesome since I didn't have a mini-muffin tin and now I do! yahoo! I've been wanting one!). We put peanut butter and plain M&Ms in there for our daily treat.
Again, I am surprised at how often Wesley forgets. Which is fine with me. Then I eat three days' worth at a time. Heehee...
I have two more advents that are really more Mommy advents, with scriptures and activities.
The first I made a couple years ago.... it's in a cool tin, with cards.
I suppose the questions are easy enough I could do them with the kids. It's just a chance to read a little bit about Christmas every day.
The last was a gift from Wandering Nana, who served in YW with me several years ago. Hers has scriptures and activities on each card, and you turn the card over when you're done. It's not a 24-piece advent, it's a 12-days-of-Christmas thing, plus they are not numbered so you can ponder/work on whatever you'd like. It's cute, too.
Although I haven't been diligent about these two advents, I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to ponder Christmas. Any chance I have to meditate and chill out, I need to take it. Maybe these next few days, as Christmas anticipation comes to a fever pitch, I'll cherish these even more.
It's been a fun month, counting down until Christmas.
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