Season of Advent - Day 21

It has been a little while since I have posted about our Advent activities. Shortly after my last post, we were able to decorate our tree. LJ had fun helping us, though he likes to put all of the ornaments in one location, so we were helping him try to spread things out a little more. :)
Our Advent Manger scene is really coming along. We have enough stickers for the wall that one day we will do an animal or person and the next day we do two stars. When we get more in to the people (we have just done animals so far) we are actually probably going to do all the wise men in one day and things like that. We have that many stickers and not the many days left. LJ really loves putting these on the wall each day. He gets so excited and loves placing them himself or telling Daddy where to put it (Daddy helps with bigger stickers like the animals).

Our Manger Scene so far

I have been ever mindful of how much Santa has become a part of Christmas and it seems like so many are forgetting what Christmas is really about. It makes me sad to think that way, but so often that is how it seems anymore. I find myself singing many of the great hymns of the season while trying to go to bed and then when I wake. It is nice. We have spoken to LJ a lot about how Christmas is celebrating the birth of Baby Jesus. I love when he then tries to parrot back "Baby Jesus?" Whenever he repeats a word or phrase he always makes it a question, it is very cute.

Another part of my getting ready for Christmas day is to do some baking. Well, some might be a slight under statement. Last year I ended up baking I think at least 6 or 7 dozen cookies for family and friends. I love doing that. This year I can't make as many, as I haven't had a good working oven until today. The oven that was in the house when we moved in had a shot thermostat. At one point it almost maxed out at 600 degrees when it should have been in the 400's. I knew then and there that there was no way I was baking in that oven. Last night Hubby and his dad moved the range from our old house (we have yet to sell it) over to our new house and we put in a replacement (free) range in that house.

What have you and your family been up to in order to prepare for Christmas? I would love to hear all about it!

Until next time... Happy Holiday preparations!

Season of Advent - Day 10

I know that I have not been blogging about our Advent activities each day, but we are doing our best to prepare our hearts for the celebration of our Savior's birth. Each night LJ and Hubby get together to pick out what image we are going to add to our manger scene that is this year's "advent calendar." LJ is always so excited to put up the stickers that he wants to put them all up at one time. Every night he asks to do more, but we have to tell him we will put up another picture the next night.

Our Manger scene so far

It has taken us a bit of time to find the time to decorate our house more for the Christmas season, but yesterday I brought in our boxes of decorations so they would be here when I was in the mood to decorate for Christmas, and that ended up being today. We did some of our indoor decorating last night, but it mostly consisted of putting garland up our banister and some garland on our mantel (with an added string of colored lights). I was happy that we were also able to put up our stockings. It did make me realize though, that we never did get a really nice stocking for LJ as we had a feeling my mother-in-law may make one for him. She may make one yet, but we are going to go out this weekend to buy two cute stockings (might as well prepare for Baby C's first Christmas while we are at it) and then I am going to customize them myself to make them special. 

Today I wanted to do more decorating around the house, so I put up more of our decorations on the mantel, and I am surprising Hubby by having the tree up and already strung with lights when he gets home. LJ doesn't know about the tree either, so when he wakes from his nap, he will be so surprised! My hope is that tonight we can prepare our house by putting ornaments on our tree as a family. 

Here are some pictures of more of our decorations.

How are you preparing your hearts and homes during this Advent Season? I would love to read your comments!

Until next time... Happy Prepartions!

The Season of Advent - Day 2

While most people know or have heard of advent calendars and Advent for December, not everyone knows that the true Season of Advent starts 4 Sundays before Christmas. That means that  this year November 28th was the beginning of Advent.
We want to teach our children about Jesus and God at an early age. One way to begin to teach children about the true meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the Advent season and explain take the time to explain it to them each day.
It can be hard to teach young children about something and know that they are really understanding it. I had seen a great post on Advent calendars and making your own over at Keeper of the Home, and it made me start thinking about Advent season in our house and how we can celebrate it. I wanted to make our calendar this year with LJ, but that isn't going to happen as we have had to much going on. Then while I was out with my mom on Saturday I saw the cutest thing at Walmart. It is a set of wall/window clings that are the Manger Scene.

There are a ton of stars with this so there are more than enough images for the entire Advent season. I like that the images are kid oriented so my son loves it.
We didn't get to start putting this up yesterday like I had hoped, so I did two images today. I got my son together with me and we cleaned the wall to make sure the clings would stick. Then I picked what would be the best images to start with: the manger and the words.

First, i put up the manger as this would be the center of the rest of the season. LJ wasn't too interested in it at first, but then he saw that mommy had put something on our wall, and that made him want to see what I was doing. I explained to him that we were starting our advent season and that this is when we celebrate Baby Jesus being born.

Once the manger was up I told LJ we were going to put up one more picture and I read what the words said. After peeling it off of the backing, I had him help me put it on the wall. He really liked helping me put something on the wall and making sure it was stuck on.

I think this is a really cute manger scene. One thing I like it that it can come off and be repositioned on the wall. I don't know if it will last more than one year, but at the price I paid, it wouldn't entirely matter and maybe next year we will finally be able to make our own family Advent Calendar that we can use year after year.
I look forward to seeing what picture LJ will want to put up tomorrow. I am going to let him pick the picture each day and then before we leave our house on Christmas Eve we will put up the last cling which I will of course make sure is the Baby Jesus asleep in the hay. :)

How do you celebrate the Advent season with your family? Do you have a calendar you use each year or some other tradition you have in prepare yourselves for Christmas? I would love to hear from you!

Until next time... Happy Advent!