Advent

Does your family have an Advent tradition? Ours didn't really, but my sister and I found these cute houses after Christmas last year and we decided to start something. Any guesses as to when I set mine up? Yes, that's right, on the afternoon of December 1, in a race to get it ready before Zack's bedtime.

I thought about candies or little toys, but decided there is a lot of candy and toys already flooding the season. These little doors would be exciting just by their novelty, so I decided I wanted to use scriptures, repeating the story so that it would become ever more familiar. Zack is at that age that kids are such sponges, able to remember and repeat everything they hear. Why waste it on his just repeating the text of television comercials, eh? I thought I'd be able to google around and find a sequence of scriptures that I thought was just right but I didn't. I ended up taking from several lists and splitting it up so that we talk about the whole story over the course of the month. The hardest part was getting the printouts folded and rolled up tiny enough to get them into those tiny doors!

After almost a week, Zack is still really excited about it and James and I are enjoying it too. I've put a tiny treat in every two or three days, but I'm trying to emphasize that our focus is on the story. We open a door at dinner, if possible, or if not, at bedtime. We missed one day and did two the next day. It's pretty easy. I'm hoping he'll start noticing that some of what we're reading is repeated in Chritsmas hymns and in church services.