How we do Christmas

I LOVE the Christmas season!  I think it gets more and more meaningful and fun as the kids get older!  

Here is what we are doing this year...

We kicked off the season in November by participating in Operation Christmas Child.  The older two each packed a shoebox for another child their same ages. This year I remembered to print tags online so we can track what country our boxes are delivered to! It will be exciting when we get that email! Next year Carter will be old enough to understand more of what's going on and help pack a shoebox as well.

As you probably already know, each night/afternoon this year we've been doing an advent activity from our calendar, and we are LOVING this tradition.  I like that I can secretly switch the cards around sometimes if I'm feeling too lazy for what was originally assigned.  These have been a fun way to keep the meaning of Christmas simple and true.

I also wrapped all our Christmas books that we hadn't seen since last year and  each night we open and read a new book.  Some of them are even library books and those are numbered for a specific date so they can be opened and returned.  And a couple of them are actually nativity puzzles, just for a fun surprise, cuz we love doing puzzles!  

After we open the Christmas book, we also read a few stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible, starting all the way at the beginning. Every story connects to Jesus and is perfect to read again this time of year, reminding us why we NEED a savior, why we are so thrilled that Jesus has come!  The kids LOVE these stories and beg me to keep reading, saying with great excitement how they "love the Bible!!"  

As for actual Christmas and presents, we don't do Santa so we actually haven't even been talking about presents AT ALL.  But this year for the first time I am doing "something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read" for each of the kids.  So I FEEL like I'm really only getting the kids one main present and even that one isn't extravagant.  We fill stockings with little things and on Christmas Eve they'll each get a new pair of slipper jammies. We rarely buy actual jammies for jammies, we do a lot of tshirts and sweats, so new jammies is special.  

And that's it!  But so wonderful!!