Advent 2015! The Day before...

Looking back over the past few years of advent activities, it just amazes us how Henry has grown and what a wonderful and special time the Christmas season is. This year, we wanted to once again focus in on the reason for the season. Advent means arrival and as we anticipate the coming of Jesus, we remember how thankful we are for all our family and friends who have touched our lives in immeasurable ways. This year, we decided to spend each day of advent focusing on a one of our amazing family members and friends and their families. Our goal is to spend some time as a family to reflect on the wonderfulness of each of these relationships and brainstorm ideas of something special we can do, say and/or pray for them as a gift to show our love to each of these special people. Henry was put in charge of coming up with the list and he jumped right in coming up with names of our family and friends whom we charted out throughout the month.

In addition, we gave ourselves 7 (seems like a good number... plus guess who just turned 7!!!) slots for special Christmas activities to do throughout the month: some oldies but goodies and some brand spanking new. We brainstormed together for a list of ideas. Then each of us got to pick two. The final choice was determined by a family vote. :)

To help us reflect each day on the wonderfulness of God, Patricia found two books to inspire us: "Sing a Song of Christmas" and "Wake up to Joy." "Sing a Song of Christmas" gives a daily devotion and verse along with a Christmas song to sing. Sunday's song was "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" and tonight's song was "Joy to the World." We were all excited to sing Christmas songs together and tying it to a devotion was icing on the cake. The "Wake to Joy" book walks us through a longer devotion along with opening and closing prayers that ties into that devotion. Sunday's devotion was focused on "Paying Attention" while tonight's devotion was on "Choosing the Path of Light." We are very excited to be able to continue our Advent tradition!