The Countdown Begins!

Yesterday was the first day of Advent. The kids had such fun counting down the days to Thanksgiving with Jack's awesome homemade paper chain, that I thought surely, THIS will be the year that an Advent calendar would work for us!

I try so hard to help my kids overcome the mass market hysteria that is in their faces every day, and instead, to prepare their minds and hearts to celebrate the true meaning of the season - the birth of our Lord!  But to be honest, it ain't easy.

I've tried to use many different types of advent calendars in my quest - the key word being TRIED.  The year Jack was three, I used an advent wreath and found out that candles and toddlers don't mix.  All he wanted to do was blow out the candle "again" and "again" and "AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN!!!!" until he was a shrieking mess on the floor and I was ready to chuck the wreath out the window.  We've also tried the cheapo, piece-of-chocolate-behind-a-cardboard-door kind too. These are great if you only have one child...with more children it quickly becomes an exercise in hysteria as Jesus is forgotten during the fight to the death over a sliver of chocolate.  I spent a small fortune on an Usborne Advent book last year that had a figure to pop out each day for 25 days, eventually helping your children build an entire nativitiy set. But the figures didn't fit in their stands well and much weeping and gnashing of teeth ensued. 

When baby Jesus is hurled across the room by a child screaming "Why won't He STAND UP!!!???"

...that's when you know the message is not quite getting across.

But this year?  THIS year might be "it".  I think I may have struck on something that will become a family tradition as well as our own personal advent calendar.

For eight years, since Jack was first born, we've been accumulating Christmas story books.  Mostly from my mom and me as it seems neither of us can walk by a well-illustrated children's book without it leaping into our hands and insisting on coming home with us.  Rudolph has also helped build our library as he's been bringing a book and pajamas to the children on Christmas Eve for the last four years!

With my idea hat on, I spent a half hour the other day with some coordinated wrapping paper from Target, and wrapped up the whole lot of them!  Then I used some fancy labels I got for pennies at Office Depot to put the numbers 1-23 on each of the books

Currently, our library includes juuuuust enough books to cover us from the 1st through the 23rd, leaving Christmas Eve for Rudolph. Thank goodness for the Jan Brett Treasury that includes 7 stories - we're milking that one for all it's worth!

I put the books in numerical order in a metal beverage tub and covered the ugly label on the tub with a dolled up sign using leftovers from Ben's birthday presents.

The only books I consciously rigged to fall on certain days were the first book and the last.  The LAST book, of course, is The Night Before Christmas!  But the first one is one that I picked up last week at Borders - I thought it was the perfect way to engage the kids in thinking about the Christmas Story. 

The illustrations in this book are phenomenal, and they have the added bonus of changing as you turn the page, much like those billboards that act like vertical blinds.  Molly is enchanted, especially with the illustration of the angel who came to tell Mary and Joseph about Jesus.

Tonight was night number two, and our story was one of my favorites from when I was a little girl.  "Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree"  Molly and Ben loved the story of the tree that just won't fit properly, so the top gets chopped off and thrown out, to be found by someone else who chops the top off and throws it out...and so on and so forth until the teeny tiny tip of the tree ends up with the mice who live in the wall behind Mr. Willowby's grand and tall tree. 

So far, things are looking good.

Two down, twenty-two to go!