Advent Calendars

Happy December! It's the most wonderful time of the year and another year of advent calendars! I shared our advent calendars last year, one of which was scripture based and the other one, a book calendar. We loved them both so much that we decided to do them again this year but with a few changes and added a third calendar as well! 

A few of our favorite Christmas books from our collection for our book calendar ...

A fun change I wanted to make to the book advent calendar this year was to wrap each book like a present. Every day Liam gets to choose a book from his shelf to open and it has been a fun surprise so far to see which ones he has picked!

Liam opened the first book yesterday and found Little Blue Trick's Christmas inside. Not only does it has his favorite truck inside but a Christmas tree lights up and flashes at the end of the book! He already loves it so much! Today he opened Follow the Star. An adorable book from my childhood about the wiseman following the star to Bethlehem.

At the moment, we don't have a mantle in our home. It made hanging the scripture advent calendar I made last year pretty tricky. It fell down quite a few times during the season and with grabby toddler hands, just didn't seem like the best fit this year. Thank goodness for Grandma West, she came to our rescue! She got us this adorable pocket tree calendar and gave it to us when we visited last weekend. All the scripture cards I made fit perfectly in the pockets and of course, we added treats inside to go with it! After mentioning the grabby toddler hands, I feel silly admitting that I hung it low enough for Liam to reach thinking it would be fun to have him be able to reach inside on his own. What was I thinking?! haha I now find the scripture cards strewn about our house and had to take the chocolates out of the bottom part of the tree to keep him from eating them all at once. I think we will be moving it up the wall by the end of the day! haha

Liam is really into numbers right now and points them out on the calendar and traces them with his finger, it is adorable!

Reaching in for his first treat yesterday ...

The scripture we read got me so excited to hear pieces of the Savior's birth over the next 25 days! The activity was to decorate for Christmas but we already took care of that. ;)

Look at that sweet face! He makes the best excited noises when he gets to have a treat ...

Opening it all by himself ...

The third calendar we decided to add this year is called "Light the World - 25 Ways in 25 Days". It is so important to our family to keep Christ in Christmas and our hearts focused on him as he is the reason for the season. What better way than 25 days of service and giving just like he did while he was on the Earth. You can find the calendar here! Happy Advent friends! XO