Monday, December 1, 2008

Advent Calendar 2008

My original plan was to just recycle last year's advent calendar but when I looked at it there were several things that we just couldn't do in Egypt. Things like visiting Temple Square or going Christmas Light Looking. So I made up some new ones, only I forgot to include any "grown-up" Christmas stories. Rachel doesn't really have the attention span for that, though, so I suppose we can read those as we see fit and add more grown-up things as our family grows.

Here's what we'll be doing this year:

  • Watch "Mr. Krueger's Christmas"
  • Watch "Nora's Christmas Gift"
  • Watch "The Story of the Other Wise Man"
  • Watch "The Nativity"
  • Watch "Joy to the World"
  • Reach the Christmas story and act it out
  • Watch the 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional (Dec. 7)
  • Choose a favorite Christmas song to sing
  • Take a donkey ride on Daddy's back
  • Play a game together
  • Sing your favorite Christmas hymn
  • Watch Mommy and Daddy dance to "their" song
  • Turn on Christmas music and dance around together
  • Go caroling to a friend or neighbour
  • Go to the branch Christmas party (Dec. 13)
  • Share your testimony about the Savior
  • Tell why you love someone
  • Send out Christmas letters (Dec. 5)
  • Call Grandparents to wish them a Merry Christmas (Dec. 24/25)
  • Share a favorite Christmas memory
  • Draw a Christmas picture
  • Make snowflakes
  • Bake Christmas cookies
  • Sing Christmas songs around the Christmas tree

The ones with set dates will be reserved; no surprise fun on those days. The others I cut into strips and put them into an empty kleenex box. We'll take turns drawing them out and hopefully it will help us get into the Christmas spirit. Another benefit of putting them in the box is that if we draw out a time-consuming one and Andrew still has too much homework we can put it back in and fish around for a quick one and leave the time-consuming ones until after finals.

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