Christmas Advent Calendar

My mom made Ben and I this advent calendar the year that we got married. We used to fill all 24 little pouches with a piece of candy and take turns taking the candy out of the pouch every day in December. Last year things started to change a little bit, as Drake was old enough to eat the candy, so every evening he would take the candy from the appropriate pouch and have a little Christmas treat after dinner.

Although the candy thing was fun and worked great, I really wanted to do something a little more meaningful and start a new tradition for our family. After thinking it over for a while I came up with the idea of putting a little piece of paper in each pouch. Each piece of paper has an instruction on it. Many of the instructions are geared towards some sort of Christmas activity and some of the pieces of  paper have instructions to go get a piece of candy from Momma.

I was thinking that some other people might be interested in doing something similar so I thought I would share what our pieces of paper said.

• Bake Christmas Cookies


• Bake a Birthday cake for Baby Jesus


• Go to Jolly Holiday Lights


• Drive around town and look at lights


• Pick 3 things out of your cupboard to donate


• Drink hot chocolate


• Go visit Santa


• Go to a movie with Momma


• Go to a movie with Daddy


• Read a Christmas book


• Watch a Christmas movie


• Put up Christmas decorations on the window


• Make food for the reindeer


• Get a piece of Candy

I then sat down with our calendar and first filled in all the activities making sure we had time to do them on the appropriate day. After all the activities were placed I filled in any empty spots with the 'get a piece of candy' instructions.  I am anxiously awaiting December 1st when Drake takes out the first piece of paper and finds out he gets to go to a movie with Daddy!

I am so excited for our new family tradition and a fun and meaningful way to count down the days until Jesus's Birthday!