Family Tradition - Advent Candles

This is the first year we are doing Advent.  I know people "do Advent" differently, but we decided this year we wanted to light the colored candles and learn a little about that tradition.  Growing up we had a little Precious Moments calendar and each day you would open one box that would tell the next part of the Christmas story.  I loved that little thing, and it's one of my favorite Christmas traditions so we wanted to start that with Brynn.  I originally made this Advent calendar where you look up verses each day, etc. but then Ryan's mom found this really cool calendar of little books that we decided to use instead.  It is a lot more kid friendly, so I'm still going to save what I made, and maybe when Brynn is like 10 we will switch to it.  HA!  

Each night when we would normally just read books before bed, we come out and sit by the Christmas tree. We sing a couple Christmas songs (that is hilarious in and of itself) and sing a little song about lighting the candles.  We hold our hands out and do little motions and Brynn loves to try to mimic the motions.  It's precious.  Then usually Ryan will light the candles and Brynn "helps."  Then we read the book for the day (they are numbered 1-24) and after we read it we have just been hanging them on the bottom of the Christmas tree.  Sometimes we use our Little People nativity scene to act out (also funny if you were watching us!) what we are reading that day.  This has been such a neat little time and I have loved learning/teaching Brynn about the candles and what each means.  Hopefully this is something we will do for many years to come, and when she's older it will be a special memory to her. 

Lighting the candles...

We quickly learned that right after we light them we have to set them back up here while we read
the story because somebody's little hands just want to hold the candles!

 I had Ryan take a few pictures because I wanted to have some to remember what we've been doing.  We took the pictures on Thursday (the day of Nonna's party) and that was a TERRIBLE day to take them!  HA!  Every two seconds she wanted to grab her new Elmo, then her new princess toy, etc.  I finally told Ryan...just FORGET the pictures! HA!  But that's real life with little ones...

I guess Elmo really wanted to hear about the Christmas story...
see how little each book is.

Then somebody needed to go get her little bag and dump out ALL the contents while we were
reading our Advent book...oh brother!

After we read the book we hang it on the tree.

Then we usually read a few Christmas books before bed.

The little books hanging on the tree.

Then we say prayers and it's off to bed for Brynn.  She usually does pretty good, although something I will not forget about this Christmas is that she has a Veggie Tales nativity that also sits under the tree and it has a star on top that plays "Away in a Manger" in the squeaky little Veggie Tale voice.  She presses that dang tree A LOT while we are reading and singing!!  HA!