Last year our Christmas was horrible. There was no Christ in Christmas. There was a flurry of activity, an abundance of parties, and lots of stress associated with Christmas, but no Jesus. Sad to say, but I'm not even sure we made it to church in December last year! This year we are determined that it will go differently. Not only do we want Christ to be in Christmas, we want it all to be about celebrating him! We cut down on Christmas parties, started getting our gifts ready in August, and Ryan is taking more days off around Christmas so there is less stress and more celebrating and relaxing. We also decided to do a tv fast for all of advent so we could focus on the things that matter.
Since the girls are older, we decided to start celebrating Advent with them. We made an advent wreath with a paper chain on it that counts down the days until Christmas. Each day we pull off a chain and read what it says. It has an activity for us to do as a family that is a winter or Christmastime related. So far we have painted ornaments for grandparents, made and hung up snowflakes, and colored the first event of the Christmas Story- an angel appearing before Mary to tell her she was going to have a baby.
My goal was to post daily in Advent so you could see all of the things we've been doing! But I think that is a little too ambitious since I am wanting to scale down on things....but I will try my best to post every couple of days.
We are so happy to be able to start traditions with our family as our girls are getting older and are happy to teach them about the baby Jesus and God's incredible love for them and all of us. We hope you are able to stop a moment and contemplate His love for you also during this busy season.
Love, the Irwins
Here are some photos:
3 comments:
Such a great idea! Glad you're updating again :)
Aww, it's so fun when they aren't all babies, isn't it? You can really DO stuff! Great ornaments.
Awesome job! I'm glad you're keeping the focus where it should be.
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