Our {homemade} Christmas Advent

We had a great trip to Arkansas and finished our visit off with a family birthday party for Harbor

{more than three cupcakes on an island this time! Yippee!}

and had Thanksgiving with David's family.

Our drive home took 17 hours and poor David only got four hours of sleep before having to go to work in the morning. I prayed so hard for him all day that he would be safe back at work!

It was a bit crazy, but we never once regretted our trip. : )

Christmas has arrived!

We have had tons of projects going on around here, but I wanted to share our Advent first.

I gathered 25 Christmas books and thankfully, we didn't have to buy any.

I printed numbers and cut double layers of card stock to mount them.

I made sure that Christmas day itself was the story of Jesus' birth from Harbor's bible.

All the days preceding Christmas are also books about who Jesus is and His birth.

I kept the Christmas books about snow, Santa, and Christmas trees at the beginning of Advent to really bring home the concept that those things are fun and fine, but Christmas is really about Jesus.

Harbor and I spent a good hour wrapping each book and tagging it.

It was a fun project for him to help with.

He is just old enough now to understand that we open one book per night and read it as a family.

I like it for three reasons:

1. Harbor loves opening gifts and this makes him so excited to be able to open a new "gift" every night!

I think it will help keep him away from the presents under the tree!

2. It teaches him about Jesus Christ and the real reason for the season.

3. It provides our family a chance every night to snuggle up and do something together.

It allows for so many teachable moments!

My Christmas shelves are finished, our tree is up, a slew of handmade gifts that I want to show are finished, and my Christmas cards are almost ready to mail!

Whew! I guess that means I need to start blogging every other day!  : )