Homemade Christmas Advents

I can't believe Christmas season has just started. I feel so far behind. I decided yesterday, I need to take care of some business. I did end up going to Black Friday but I didn't go until around 7:00am. No crowds! I talk to a friend about the craziness around B.F. She said there was a mob of people Friday morning. Around 800 people at the Jane, Mo store. This store is located in the middle of nowhere. I was really glad I wasn't there early that morning. It sickens me to find out a Walmart employee was killed by people were just plain greedy. My prays go out to this poor employee's family. A very sad way to start the holiday. So, I decided we are going to focusing more on a Christ like Christmas. Less about the gifts and more about the savior. I came across this great website called The Family Home Evening Spot. Last night, I ended up working on all three advents. I'm going to let each child get a chance to do one of the advent calendars. This will be a lot more work but hopefully less fighting. I was able to download several Christmas Advents from her website.
I just printed off this colorful Christmas Advent calendar and laminated each piece. Each day we will add a new character.
You can find this Advent Calendar from lds.about.com. It's a simple advent that focuses on the true meaning of Christmas. Each day we will pull from each jar a scripture and image to put on the advent calendar. I just dressed up two glass jars with Christmas ribbon. I'm just going to have the kids tape each puzzle piece on the manager. Hopefully, we wouldn't lose any of the pieces and we will be able to use it again next year.

Now, this activity is just for fun. Landon cut out the whole Christmas tree. I cut out all the balls. Landon put all the number stickers on the ornament balls. I decided to tape a candy cane behind each ornament ball. Each day we will count down until Christmas.

One more thing, I'm planning on doing another activity. I'm going to check out library books about Christmas and wrap them up. We will read one Christmas book each day until we reach Christmas. On Christmas Eve we will read about Christ births from the bible.


Logan was very worried about wrapping up the books as gifts. He kept asking me if the Library knew what we're doing to the books. I told him it was okay because we were going to return all the books after we read them all.

Here are all the books from the library. I do feel bad I checked out every Christmas book. I will return them after we are done reading them.