On the First Day of Christmas. . .

Traditionally, on December first the girls and I make an advent chain. This year Signe came home from school with one she had made, so we are going to use hers. But instead of just randomly thinking up things to do as we go, I decided to try a slightly more formal approach.

Last year a friend gave me this cute little advent church with doors that open to reveal. . .whatever I decide to put inside it.

And rather than putting candy or little trinkets inside I decided to make a list of the things we want to do this year. Most of them we do every year so the hard part was narrowing it down a little. I worked it out on a calendar to be sure and put parties and things with actual dates on the right days and then printed a list of all the activities for the month:

This way I can plan ahead a be sure to have gingerbread supplies for the day we are doing houses or whatever. Then to make it interesting and try to keep the focus the joy of giving instead of getting I took it a step farther. I gave each of us a color and printed the list on four different colors of paper. If the strip of paper is, say green, which is Signe's color, she has to do an act of service during that day for a family member or someone else, and then we talk about it at the end of the day.

Today, it was Signe's turn and she helped her sister by taking her dishes to the sink and getting her a blanket when she was watching TV. When I asked her how that made her feel she said:

"Well, kinda bad 'cause I don't like having to do so much for her, but kinda good because I was helping someone."

I guess I'll take that. We will see how the rest of the month progresses.

**Movie of the night (we try to watch one every night, plus we DVR them so we don't always watch them on the night they aired): A Dog Named Christmas***