Advent starts on Sunday - wow! This year we are hoping to be more intentional with some of our preparations - and hopefully creating some new and meaningful family traditions (as well as continuing some!) in the process.
One thing we have already done is collect items for and deliver our Operation Christmas Child boxes. We will have the opportunity to track our boxes and see where they go this year. What a great way to show the Christmas spirit - buying gifts and sharing the love of Christ with people we will never meet.
We will probably get out the Christmas tree this Sunday afternoon. Over the past several years we have purchased a Christmas ornament on our family vacation. Looking forward to adding a Disney Cruise Line ornament this year! It's always fun to talk about and remember the vacations when we put them on the tree. Maybe this year we'll be able to laugh about the "Cackler Curse" of illness when we put the Animal Kingdom Lodge ornament on the tree... maybe...
I know we are hoping to do some more baking this year - I'm hoping we can share with friends and family too.
What are some of your traditions? Any particular recipes we should try? Stories? etc.?
Oh, that trip to the AKL wasn't that bad...
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of OCC shoe boxes before so I just read up on it. What a wonderful idea! Where do you deliver the box you packed -- did you mail it to their headquarters?
ReplyDeleteAs for holiday traditions:
-We now have a recipe for spiced cranberry fig relish deemed "it wouldn't be Thanksgiving/Christmas without...". Mmmm!
-We listen to Christmas music non-stop throughout December and typically splurge on a new Christmas CD.
-Spiced cider and Silk nog are two treats I look forward to this time of year, too.
-I enjoy the Advent wreath/candle tradition each week at church and the anticipation it brings.
Margaret - we found out about the OCC boxes through our church, and our church collects them and deliver them to the Des Moines site to be sent on from there. I'm sorry I don't know more. I'm pretty sure they all needed to be in before Thanksgiving. Next year I'll try to post about them earlier - we get a lot of our supplies for them in August, lots of great back to school sales!
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