Advent 2010

Advent is now here!  The Thanksgiving celebrations are over, we began singing Christmas carols during our church worship service on Sunday, and our church family gathered for the traditional "Hanging of the Greens" event last night.  I led the elementary children's choir in "Christmas Time is Here" for our Charlie Brown theme of the evening and they did a great job!  My daughter helped me get out all of the decorations and light the front porch railing.  We have lights on the tree and will wrap up the decorating with placing our ornaments on it later this week. 

We are making preparations for gift giving, attending extra rehearsals for concerts and holiday performances, and we have many events already scheduled on our calendars.  But what are we doing to prepare our hearts?  If we don't plan for that, it won't get done. So, this year we are reading another devotional book and story called Tabitha's Travels by Arnold Ytreeide  We received it in the mail as a gift from a dear cousin of mine, Judy.  Judy sent us Jotham's Journey last year and it was a blessing to our family!  They are creative, exciting stories about characters who could have met people from the original story of Christ's birth.  They really bring the story to life and get us thinking. Here is a link to more information about Tabitha's Travels and the Jotham's Journey series.

I also found another free resource today.  It is a Jesse Tree Advent Devotional from the blog of Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience.  It started yesterday, but I'm sure you can catch up be starting today, as I will need to do.  I have heard of this way of counting the days of Advent and tracing the heritage of Jesus, but have never done it.  I think we will do it now that we can just print off the guide and some simple ornaments to place on a small tree as we go through the scriptures.

We also have this nativity Advent calendar. It is ready to be used tomorrow and the children have decided who will get to place the first character on it - and who will get to place Jesus in the manger on Dec. 24! They worked it all out themselves. I was so impressed!

I also saw an idea in a magazine the other day for getting the kids involved in giving to others.  The article suggested to make a list of 24 good deeds that your children can do for others, print off the list, cut the items apart and place those pieces into a jar.  Then, each day of December have the children choose a slip of paper from their jar and do the kind deed for that day. I might try to have them help me create a list and decorate some jars tomorrow.

How are you and your family using the time of Advent to prepare for the celebration of Christmas?