New Traditions

Lately, I'd been wanting to do some kind of advent calendar with Elliot. However, I wanted it to have some kind of meaning behind it. Target had a sale on an advent nativity with the boxes you open and it was perfect. I thought it would come with some kind of Bible story for each day...but no luck with that one. Maybe you're supposed to put candy or something in each day.

Then--I remembered something... I had been wanting to incorporate the Jesse Tree into our Christmas somehow. When we were in Korea, we made the ornaments as part of our PWOC Christmas celebration and I loved it. The whole point is that for the season of advent it goes over the geneology of Jesus. I like it because it's a little different than just reading the story of Jesus' birth, the 3 wise men, etc. and goes back to the Old Testament, beginning with Jesse the father of David. I found a few different ideas online and went with one that seemed super kid friendly. It has a little devotion for each day which I made into a booklet and had printed. There is also ornaments you can print out so I printed them, shrunk them down, colored, then laminated them. Now, each of our boxes in our advent calendar has an ornament to put on our Jesse Tree (which is just our table center piece).

I'm so excited to have a new little tradition we can do with our kids each Christmas. I'm sure as they get older, we can go into more detail. My point in sharing this, is to see if you all have any other ideas that you do with your kids? I'd love to learn some more things we can do at this fun time of year! So, all you bloggers/commenters our there--share what you've got! :-) OH--and if anyone is interested in making one of these, I can email you the file for the booklet as a word document. It took me forever to get the formatting right. haha

Our Advent Calendar & Devotion Booklet:

Here's Our Jesse Tree!