First time

This is the first time that I have been so excited for the holidays so early. Usually I am irritated at the Christmas stuff that is put out so early, but my heart has changed this year because we are doing something really special. We are celebrating advent this year.

We have done advent calendars, but nothing beyond that. We are going to make an advent wreath and light the candles. Every day we will read "Jotham's Journey".



The biggest thing that we are doing starting this year is we are going to choose a mission or ministry that we can do as a family for the whole year. The first one we chose is going to a nursing home every week. Both of my older boys like to play checkers and chess so we thought we could arrange a time that we could go and play with the residents of the home. I think we will go ahead and start it next week.

I was inspired by this website http://www.adventconspiracy.org/. We already are pretty frugal at Christmas because we live on a cash only budget, but we haven't really been involved in a ministry. We want to teach our boys that it is not all about us. They are still going to get presents and stockings (although, I am kind of an extremist and I did consider not doing presents, luckily I have my husband to balance me out LOL) because we don't go overboard with them.

Today we are making Thanksgiving crafts. I will post some pictures tomorrow.