christmas advent, day 1

Dear World, I am alive. Some days are rough (I'm a bit over the single life), but some days are just oh so magical. I do great work, have great kids, experience great fun, know great people. I'm really blessed.

It's Christmas. There's something about Christmas. Let me put it into words: Christmas is the only thing that keeps me going after Daylight Savings ends and the days are dark dark dark, because if you aren't in love with twinkling white lights all over downtown Seattle and festive red and green lights all over houses everywhere, then you may not be in love with anything. I love the energy that is Christmas.

I've been rocking the advent calendar for a few years now. The craze started Dec. 26 one year when I got 24 little stockings on clearance at WalMart for a dime apiece. One neglected curtainrod, a few scrapbooking tags and some stamped numbers, and a fair amount of creativity later, my own personal advent calendar was born. I've been adding and refining and assembling for several years now.

I've loved advent calendars since my mom put three candies in each pocket of the Avon advent calendar in the majority of the '80s and '90s. Thanks Mom.

(it's this exact one... I found it on eBay for $119, Mom! Wowza!)

I put together the advent calendar last night. I finished by 11:30PM, which was better than the 1:15AM from the year before.

Organization is a mess but it kind of looks like this: 

Assembly went smoothly. This year we have:

• Candy for each kid (I'm trying not to eat chocolate for breakfast)
• Daily Christmas activity
• Daily scripture
• Ornament for our ceramic gingerbread house's tree
• Jesus ornament
• Piece of our magnetic Nativity scene
• Piece of a magnetic Santa scene

Yes, I crammed all of that into the stockings!!

The finished product....

I will keep the scriptures nearby and an advent book of Christmas stories from my brother Kurt. 

AND then my goal is to chronicle our adventures for December! We'll see if I can't keep this up. 

So -- Day 1. Put up the Christmas tree!

This went better than expected. No ornaments broke. They were respectful and cooperated. I told them to space the ornaments apart so they weren't all squished in the same spot. For the most part it looks fine. I don't think I moved any. Why? It's perfect.

Then Laurel wanted to play in the box.

Last year after Christmas I made a set of 28 Jesus ornaments. They are all different names for Him. I'm so excited to incorporate them into Christmas this year. I had three extra, so including today's there are already four words on the tree. I reserved the very top of the tree for all the Jesus words.

Today's word was Wonderful. In reserve was Exemplar, Counsellor, and Deliverer. I told my kids these are all words used to describe the Savior in the scriptures.

Things are Wonderful. Christmas is upon us. 

P.S. Not sure how, but the kids do not eat the candy ahead of time. They're pretty patient during Christmas! Awesome!