Christmas is by far my favorite holiday. It s a holiday filled with family, joy, wonder, excitement, and anticipation. There is something special as we prepare our hearts and minds for Christmas, the day that God himself became flesh and lived among us. It is the beginning of the story that leads to the cross and the abilitiy for us to be reconciled with God and have a personal relationship with Him. There is also a hope in this season that Jesus will come again to this earth. This excitement is visible in our home with Christmas decorations all around and Christmas music filling the air. With our home only half decorated yet, one of our Thai coworkers walked in the other day and declared Christmas is here.
I want to help Ellie to be excited and have anticipation for what is coming also, which leads us to the all popular advent calendars. With advent calendars you can see day by day that Christmas is getting closer. You have something everyday to look forward to, a little bit of something to anticipate as you grow in excitement and anticipation for Christmas.
This year I made a simple calendar, inspired by pinterest by sealing and then cutting white and red (yay for the Chinese loving red) envelopes in half and then numbering them. I pasted them in reverse order so that everyday we can take off a number and visually see Christmas get closer. Inside each pouch we have Christmas activities to do as a family.
Here is the list of things we will be doing this month (We have a few unlisted days so we can add fun activities as they present themselves):
Trim the Christmas tree
Make a Christmas craft
Bake Christmas cookies
Make peanut brittle
Decorate the house
Have a warm weather snowball fight
Make sand angels
Take Christmas pictures at the Central World (a big mall that puts up lots of decorations to lure people to come and take pictures there)
Have a picnic and share your favorite Christmas memory (we might have to help Ellie
Open a Christmas book to read as a family (times 2)
Go Christmas caroling (Ellie and I will stay home in order to receive the carolers at our home as the church members make their rounds around certain members’ homes)
Christmas party with slum children
Dress up our dog like Rudolf and watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Bake and decorate a gingerbread house
Go Christmas shopping
Celebrate Father’s Day (December 5)
Family movie night to watch a Christmas movie
Get a new Christmas CD to enjoy for the season
Christmas photo shoot at home (where Ellie poses, I mean plays, with toddler safe but not toys decorations)
Celebrate Christmas with our Thai church
Fly to the States and celebrate Christmas with our families (That’s right, we are taking advantage of Ellie’s last year to fly for cheap and going to America for 2 weeks)
This blogger has a list of 150 ideas, if you need some more.
How are you getting in the Christmas spirit? Do you have an advent calendar?
One Mom's View 
We have a LEGO advent calendar this year 🙂