Advent Calendar

Well, friends, I've been a bit MIA this week. There's been a lot going on, but mostly my problem has been that on Thanksgiving night, I spilled a glass of water on my laptop and rendered several of the keys on my keyboard useless. Like the "g" and the "h" and the apostrophe. Mostly because I couldn't bear the thought of parting with my computer, I waited until today to do anything about it and have been copying and pasting little g's and h's like crazy in order to respond (very briefly) to emails and get into my various web accounts. It's been more than a little pitiful. The lowest point was when my phone died yesterday and I had to send Jim a desperate email titled, "my pone is dead." The text said, "and computer is broken. freakin out. oin to te pone store." It's weird how alarming it is to be totally cut off. Anyway, I'm back with a very unfancy, external keyboard (fixing the computer would cost almost more than it's worth, so this is a stall tactic. Sigh). And my "pone" is back to normal, too.

All this time away from the blog has left me with quite a few pics to post AND two holidays to discuss, but it's too late for that right now, so instead this is just a quick hello to share our Advent calendar.

Big Brother is now fully engaged in Christmas and is waiting for Jesus' birthday (and let's just be honest, Santa) with bated breath, so I'm particularly thrilled to have a personal way to count down the days with him. The idea is to help focus his attention on (1) the joy of the waiting season, and (2) the spirit of self-giving love that Jesus' birth is all about. It helps that the calendar focuses my attention on those things, too--I'm finding that I often need an attitude check more than he does:).

Each little tag houses an activity for the day--some are ways of celebrating the season through traditions, others are little ways to love others. Today we drank hot chocolate and made a special Christmas card for Great Grandma (nobody tell her--it's a surprise!). Tomorrow we're going to plant flowers for a few special friends, and on Friday we're hoping to curl up and watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Yeah, this is all pretty fun for me, too. We also included several activities geared towards loving people who are less fortunate than we are--mostly on the weekends so that we can all get in on the fun. Key to this whole deal for me, however, is that it is NOT a rule or a law, just a fun idea...so there may be a few numbers left on those branches after Christmas. In fact, there will be, and I'm thankful for that freedom:).

To make the Advent calendar, I used branches from the yard, a can of white spray paint, cards cut from leftover white cardstock from Michael's, Martha Stewart Crafts decorative tape (also from Michael's), and a length of ribbon leftover from last year's Christmas. Altogether, it cost roughly $7 and took me about two hours--mostly spent coming up with the activities. Yes, we're one day into Advent, but you definitely could still pull it off...

And one more (unrelated) Advent joy that I can't hold back: our dear friends, the Debardelebens, finally made it to Uganda yesterday and today met their little boy, Charles Tucker, for the very first time. He's an orphan no longer. Now THAT is the right way to celebrate Jesus!

Happy first day of waiting...

E

Addition: A few of you asked me for activity ideas. Here are a few that we've particularly enjoyed (other than the ones mentioned above): make Christmas cookies, write a letter to Santa, make gifts for best buddies, drive around at night to see the Christmas lights, buy (and, closer to Christmas, deliver) a gift for our Angel Tree "angel," make a gingerbread house, give sweet treats to the mailperson and UPS man, deliver paperwhites to special friends, make cards for great grandparents, watch the Polar Express, go see Santa...I did not include books because we're reading Christmas stories constantly around here, and I couldn't make myself wait on any of them, but they would be a great addition. Some of our current faves are The Night Before Christmas, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Who is Coming to Our House by Joseph Slate, Book of Christmas Carols by Tomie de Paola, Drummer Boy by Loren Long, The Christmas Pageant by Tomie de Paola, and Advent Storybook by Antonie Schneider.