We've been keeping busy. This year we made our own Advent Calendar. (Thanks to some help by my family!) Almost every day we've done something to celebrate Christmas. Don't know if I'll have time to share them all, but we've taken pictures and a few of them are posted here . . . made gingerbread house / village, looked at Christmas lights, put up (artificial) Christmas tree in livingroom, and bought a (real) Christmas tree for family room -- Memo: next year we'll try to do that without locking the keys in the van, so we don't have to ask for a warm place like "The Shanty" to sit in while we wait for AAA!
We've done Christmas puzzles, attended Christmas parties / symphony, made cards and gave money to teacher with cancer at school, made cookies / candies, read the Christmas story (animated version) and will read it from Luke 2 on Christmas morning. I'm excited about doing a countdown this way. Next year, I hope to plan better and do some more meaningful and fun things.
Here's a snapshot I took of everything in order so I'd remember how to put the days up one-by-one. (They are cardstock with magnets on the back.) At Thanksgiving, I asked my parents, siblings, spouse/significant others and my children to each make two days of the calendar. Everyone put their names on the back -- something I will cherish for years to come!
