Our 12 Days of Christmas.... 12 days left:

Tonight (Saturday) we started our 12 Days of Christmas...

Well - this year the nagging thought kept coming to me that I needed to do something different for Christmas with my family! I wanted to make it more meaningful & special & not really put the whole emphasis on the Presents.... so I wanted to do special things leading up to Christmas to help us prepare us & remind us what Christmas is really about as it approached!! So I wanted to take the idea of the 12 days of Christmas & put a spin on it ..... So as I had been thinking of this idea - I found a book through Deseret called "The Twelve days of Christmas" & it seemed to be exactly what I had been thinking of doing..... (& come to find out ... I am behind the times - I guess many people do it this way now!! AND WA-LA (to funny I thought I was making breaking headlines!!!)... there is even a book written about it!!! Well I am just catching up!)

SO in summary the book... gives you ideas from a family who has done this over the years & it is packed iwth ideas, recipes, & plans you can use to plan for your family to count down Christmas together. So I have designed (not organized to well yet) my own 12 days of Christmas for our family.... not all nights will I post our activities as some will be secret!! I am excited about it & as I introduced it tonight... yeah the teen/pre-teen both thought I was a dork... the 2 youngest were way excited, but 1/2 clueless at what I was doing... Dave? I think he was just tired!!! :) so we will see how it goes!! I am excited if nothing else!! So be prepared to count down to Christmas with us!!


On the 12th day before Christmas we:

Sat on our Christmas story blanket, in front of our BIG, lit Christmas tree, I had a plate with a divided orange on it, a whole orange, & our Christmas story book. We talked about the 12 days of Christmas & how each day we would do, experience, or receive something special to help us prepare for Christmas. We talked about what Christmas is really about. Then I read the Christmas Orange story while everyone got to touch, smell, hold the whole orange, then when it came time to show how the orphans each gave 1 piece to make a whole orange for Jake who had been punished & had his orange taken away (everyone got a slice to help make a whole one)... and how special it was that the other boys thought of his feelings & how much the oranges meant & were willing to open their oranges early to share a piece with Jake.... So after discussing the story, we talked about what an orphanage is & how we would feel if we were Jake or one of the other orphans. Then I challenged our family to think of this story & work hard to do something nice (like the orphan boys did for Jake) for someone else this week... at school, at church, in the neighborhood, or in our own home. Then we had our family payer & then met in the kitchen to eat an orange (& of course who could go without a couple pieces of a Chocolate orange too!) & some hot chocolate while we visited!!

Have a great weekend!!