One of my favorite Christmas traditions with my Twerps is our nightly advent boxes. I found this divine advent book on amazon.com last year and this coordinating advent house at Target.
Starting December 1, I read a devotion from this book to the Twerps and have a coordinating gift behind the door. The devitions are ONE scripture in Toddler language and then a 1-2 sentence THANKFUL prayer to say. IT IS SO SIMPLE and SO FUN! (Not to mention a great way to count down the days...)For example, tonight we read about how God created the stars and moons and day and night. So I had the glow in the dark stars they could stick on their ceilings before bedtime.
Yesterday we read about how God cares even for the sparrow, so I had bird seed they could sprinkle for the sparrows to show their love.
Tomorrow we are going to talk about how Jesus is the light to the earth so they will find mini flashlights behind the little door....and I will probably see them all night long too!!
I love spending this time with them and hopefully nestling a little holiday love in their hearts. And the lesson that life is about so much more than ourselves -- but OTHERS!
Tell me about one of YOUR favorite traditions....BE CAREFUL, I might steal it.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
XXXOOO,
CG
9 comments:
Ah! You've taken the advent calendar to a whole new height! Your twerps are going to remember so much form your tradition!
I guess I am slowly letting little glimpses of traditions out on my blog each day, but one I remember when i was younger is that my dad INSISTED we wait till Christmas morning to open presents. However, as we got older, we knew that morning officially started at 12:01 am. So, many years, we'd wake up mom and dad in the wee hours to open presents. Then mom and dad would go back to bed, and us kids would either play with our new stuff or sleep or watch the snow fall through the window.
Wow, i'm impressed with your organization. I would be lucky to have had that out by December 1 let along have them filled with verse friendly gifts! I'm on my knees bowing. You are the alpha-mom! LOL
We do an advent calendar, as well. I love how you do it with the devotional. I hadn't thought to do that. Really creative.
We have a lot of Christmas traditions... one of the fun ones (for this moving military mom, it gets kind of lonely in the kitchen on Christmas day!) is for Christmas dinner, everyone picks something they would like, but they have to cook it. (sometimes with a little help) My kids really get into this and plan what they would like to cook. My daughter usually does pumpkin pie, but did green bean casserole last year. My son can actually make rolls. He started with freezer rolls, progressed to the frozen dough, and then onto 'from scratch' rolls. (yep, my kids are OLD! :D) My husband wanted lobster tails one year, that was fun and different!
that is so precious!!
mine are just almost 2 and 3 1/2 so we really dont have any traditions yet. this might have to be the start of one though.
except chocolate will have to be involved at some point.
oh and growing up, we TOTALLY did what dana said.. i remember waking up at 3:00 am and getting my brother and sister up so we could sneak out and see what was under the tree and peek in our stockings. we'd try to wake up our parents but they made us wait til AT LEAST 5:00 am before we could open anything. those are some of my fondest memories.
dana -- you are amazing. truly truly amazing. i am so blessed to have met you. i mean that.
PS - on that note, another 'tradition' my brother and sister and i had was, in the weeks before christmas, if my parents were in the other room or outside or whatever, we'd take scissors or a razor blade (my parents were all into safety like that) and we'd carefully cut the tape on the gifts so we could unwrap them and peek, then we'd cut an exact same size piece of tape to go over the cut one, so as to disguise what we'd done.
heartwarming, isn't it?
keep your eye on those twerps.... my mom just found out within the last year that we did that. she was shocked and appaulled. heehee
Marchelle- i did the SAME. THING. i always thought i was so clever.
i can't really remember- it IS still before 9am today- but we used an advent calendar. it was a little mouse. 'mr. mousey.' not to original but i still have it, to this day. oh and i got a total kick out of my moms gift-card banner holder thing. i LOVED that thing. and i was always allowed to open one present on xmas eve- and my parents too, but i got to pick out which ones they opened. super fun. i agonized over that decision ALL. DAY!
We had a little mouse calendar as well. My brother and I would alternate days moving the mouse. Sometimes we fought about it (tis the season and all). But it's something I look forward to every year. And my mom still hangs that calendar.
My brother and I would get up in the wee hours as well to sneak out and see what Santa brought us. Our family opened presents Christmas Eve, so Christmas Day was when Santa brought his big gift. We would sneak out at like 4 in the morning, see what was there, play for a little bit, and then go back to bed for a few hours. I think 8:00 was when we could officially wake mom and dad up. Which was ETERNITY to a child, lol!
And recently, my mom stopped putting name tags on the gifts and went to this wacko number system. And TO THIS DAY, I cannot figure out how she knows all the numbers! No cheat sheet or anything. At 27 years of age (me, not her), my mom is still amazing me, lol!
Mine is new PJ's for my precious daughter. We open presents on Christmas morning, but she always got to open the PJ's on Christmas Eve and wear them to bed. On Christmas morning she'd run down the stairs in new PJ's to see what Santa had brought. Made for great photos, and I knew she wouldn't be wearing a ratty tee shirt or some other atrocity. PD is now almost 30 and I still buy her PJ's for Christmas (she's just pickier now and they have to be Nautica or Tommy Hilfiger.)
The other is wrapping paper... I know it's wierd, but her presents were alway wrapped in one kind of paper, my husband's in another and they wrapped mine in a third. Gifts for friends and family were wrapped in various others. But we always knew by looking under the tree what gifts belonged to whom.
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