it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas . . .

The extra week between Thanksgiving and the beginning of December this year has been driving me crazy!  It's not that I want time to fly by any more quickly than it already is, but usually right after Thanksgiving I am ready to begin the countdown to Christmas.  We put up our holiday decor last weekend (it's always nice to do that big job on an extended weekend), and it just seemed like time to begin our advent activities.  

Now that Braden is old enough to understand the idea of "counting down," I've decided to start what I hope will become advent traditions in our family (if I had done this last year he would have been asking daily if tomorrow was Christmas . . . in fact I sort of think it will be a recurring question for the next few weeks!).

One activity that he is very excited to begin is our advent stockings . . .

I got this idea on (of course!) Pinterest.  Last year I shopped the after Christmas clearance sales and picked up assorted kids' Christmas socks to use; add a roll of ribbon and mini clothespins, and you've got advent stockings. Our plan is to place a slip of paper listing a fun family activity or a small gift for the kids to pull out of one stocking each day (you could also get small trinkets/goodies to put in the stockings). . . . some of our slips say things like bake Christmas cookies, go for a drive to look at the lights, take a treat to a friend, watch a Christmas movie, make hot cocoa, and unwrap a new Christmas book) . . .  so excited to start this tomorrow!

That leads to something else I plan to do: read a Christmas book each night.  I raided my children's book collection and pulled out all of the holiday books, and then also shopped for some new titles (to be opened via advent stockings) - I think we now have enough books to read one each night during advent.  I am going to pack up all the books and store them with our holiday decor so that they will be sort of a special Christmas season treat (and hope that we continue to read one each night each December).

Earlier this week Elise and I were home alone together one rare evening, so I thought it would be fun to try taking some pictures of her in front of the tree/lights.  E was a trooper and did a pretty good job sitting still while I experimented with the camera . . . 

 (I think this last shot is her "Are we done YET?" expression . . . ;)