Hope

I have been thinking a lot about focusing my family during this holiday season.  There are so many distractions during this month and I really need to ground my family and teach my kids.  We have started some new traditions around here to try and focus more on the true meaning of Christmas.  I want my kids to remember that Christmas is about Christ and love.  We are celebrating Advent for the first time.  Yesterday we lit our first candle and talked about Hope.

 I think the girls mostly liked lighting the candle and reading our scriptures in the near darkness.  We sang songs and read our scriptures together and it created a nice spirit for concentrating on the true meaning of Christmas.

 We started our special family home evenings last Monday.  We always use our symbols of Christmas bag story to start things.  We will have a few Christmas lessons, try and find a good service opportunity and buy some things for an angel tree donation over the next few Mondays.  We are also doing a daily scripture countdown to Christmas.  There are 24 stockings hung on a line and each one has a scriptural message explaining the Christmas story in depth and a couple of pieces of Halloween candy.  We are using this countdown.  I like it because it is very kid friendly and most of the days have a short video to go with the reading.  I think this is really going to set the tone for our month.  The girls are very excited about taking down a stocking everyday. 

The homemade Christmas decor is overtaking the house.  Here is a sweet little stocking Red Fish made during quiet time.  She stitched two papers together and then decorated it.  I thought it was very cool that she did it all by herself.