Christmas Calendar

Every Christmas, we have a white elephant gift exchange with my mom's side of the family. There are just too many of us to exchange gifts. We used to do a drawing, but no more. Its been replaced by the Great White Elephant Exchange! Its fun, sometimes heated, sometimes its the fleece blanket, other times a set of screwdrivers...you just never know.

Last year my sister Katie ended up with a Christmas calendar.

I think its adorable and so did she. But she had full bags to take back to New Hampshire so the little treasure stayed with us.

We had an advent calendar as a kid and I remember very small pieces of chocolate in it. Well...my kids don't know about that and there was no candy in ours! Instead, we had an activity each evening that we did as a family. We had a couple family movie nights,
tree decorating,
Luminaria Festival,
reading stories and singing carols by the tree,
hunting for Christmas lights (and ending at Mc D's for sundaes),
making a Christmas card and praying for that person,
making dough ornaments, and



painting them the next night


We did a gingerbread kit house, too


Some of our activities were really, really fun for our whole family and there were other nights that Lars and I struggled to get a good idea scribbled down on a piece of paper to put into the "box."
I am so thankful for that little advent calendar that was too big for Kate to fit in her luggage. I know that we could have had all these great family times without it, but I am not sure if we would have thought of it..or been committed to it. But Luca would talk about it all day...who got to open it? and what we were going to do? I feel challenged to keep this up with our family. Not a daily thing, but a planned, scheduled time. It is easy when they are 2 and 4...but 12 and 14??? I pray that they will still be interested in hanging out with old mom and dad at that point, too! They are such great boys.