'Twas Nearly the Night Before Christmas

This advent has been rather relaxing, I had intentions to celebrate many Feast Days but to be honest, some were celebrated and some weren't. Instead we have relaxed and just drifted along, but we have a couple of little traditions which were kept and that I believe is the key to memories. Traditions. It always astounds me how quick the children are to adapt a new tradition, how they remember what we have done in the past.

So what do our traditions consist of? Some are traditions that we have down since we first had children, such as our manger, although the current manger was made a couple of years ago by Carpenter. For every good deed the children place a straw in the manger by Christmas baby Jesus should have a soft bed.

A new tradition we introduced a couple of years ago thanks to the ladies at 4 Real is decorating our tree in advent colours prior to Christmas.

Yesterday Jelly Bean(4) made me smile, we were sitting together next to a tree at the shopping centre and the tree was decorated with silver and red baubles. She said to me in astonishment "Mum, the have the wrong colours on the tree, they don't have the Advent colour!"
Tomorrow, Christmas Eve we will change the colours of our tree. The children are very excited.

Our very first year of marriage before we even had children included an advent wreath. PC wound bullwire into a circular shape including candle holders for the candles. We have fleshed it out with newspaper and every year we wind fresh greenery on with a purple ribbon. Adding candles we have our instant wreath.


This year we added a couple of new traditions that have been enthusiastically embraced. Firstly we were given a set of Christmas felt figures, secondly I purchased an advent calendar at a garage sale. I was trying to decide what use to put the calendar to when my friend Lynn suggested placing a different figure for each day in the pockets. They also enjoy opening the doors on our old calendar.


And of course we have baskets of books to enjoy and read through.
Only 2 more days to Christmas:)