Advent

Advent - the arrival of a notable person.  In our family, advent is the celebration of the coming of Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

I can not remember when I first bought the advent calendars for the boys.  Since I have three of the exact same calendars, I'm going to assume B-man was on the way or very little.  I know I bought them at Bed, Bath & Beyond.  I have never been thrilled with the design on the doors but I liked the size of the doors.

When we first started doing the advent calendars I would run around trying to find small toys to fit inside each door's compartment.  It was a little harder than I thought it would be.   I was super excited to discover Lego Advent calendars.

The Lego calendars are all in one outfits.  You can set them up on a table and be done.  They have a flap that serves as a play mat area.  Kids can push open the numbered door, find a small Lego project with 'directions' on the back of the punched out door.  Since we have our own calendar, I've always just opened the day myself, ripped the door off and put it in our calendars.

Lately, the calendars have been a little tougher.  There's a five year gap between The Bigs and B.  There aren't many things that interest them both.  This year I've stuck to candy for The Bigs and a Lego for B.

I get a few bags of Christmas candy and rotate through them for the month.  I also get a few specials candies for special days.  Last Saturday, Ryan and The Bigs went to see the new Star Wars movie so I put Star Wars Jelly Beans in their calendars that morning.  Later this week we'll load up in the car and look at Christmas lights.  I have chocolate Christmas light bulbs for that day.  I have Hot Chocolate stirrers for our Christmas movie night.

This year I added Bible verses to their calendar.  I went through the birth of Jesus in Luke and Matthew and divided it into 25 days.  Some days have one verse, others have up to five.  I put each day's verse into a Google Slide Presentation.  Then I printed them using a setting that printed 6 slides per page.  We've added them to fridge each day.

I've loved seeing them each day.  It's helped all of us focus on the reason for advent.  We are looking forward to the birth of Jesus Christ.  The calendar helps B keep track of how many days until Christmas.  This year it's even helped him learn about fractions.  On December 5th, he said "We are 1/5th of the way to Christmas!"  Each day brings us close to the big event!