Our Advent Traditions

With a two and three year old there are lots of fun Christmas ideas floating around the internet. All year I hummed and hawd haha...yes I know! I just love Christmas! I also know the traditions I make now will become favorites and continue on for years and years to come. I settled on three advent traditions this year. All simple, all fun, all toddler friendly.

1) firstly the easiest and most common...The chocolate advent calendar. I got hubby a Lindt one, and the babies a cheap one...let's face it they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a $1 one and a $10 one ;). This has been the best. They are on their BEST behaviour during breakfast and eat even faster just to get to advent. Haha I might need to get year round advent calendars to encourage excellence in the morning hahaha.

2) Second advent is a our 'book advent' I have been collecting random Christmas books 2-3 a year for 3ish years. I also bought a bunch from scholastics for $1.25 each. I also stole a handful of 'winter books' from our regular collection. This has been by far the most fun for the kids. I have wrapped every book up and they get to open one each night and it's our bedtime book. Such fun! I will put them away with our Christmas decorations at the end of the season so each year they are new and exciting to them at Christmas. It also makes them feel like it's a present hehe!

3) We love Christmas and as Christians  we really strive to make it Christ centred even though it's sometimes hard for our children to grasp. I bought a 'advent Christmas story' each day we read a mini board book that breaks down the true and meaningful Christmas story in a easy to get way for the babies. My husband always told me how his Dad read the Christmas story every year and that was their tradition. I loved that. He also said it was extremely hard to focus because he knew the gifts were coming next. I thought this might be more toddler friendly&I thought this was a good combination of both and  and would make it apart of our daily discussion with our babies. As small of a part of the day it is, it still makes me happy taking a moment to not focus on Santa etc and focus on the real meaning with the kids. I really want them to grow up being able to appreciate the significance of the greatest gift God ever gave us-his son! 

Anyways these are our 2013 traditions and we intend to carry all three of them into 2014!