Advent Adventures

As i added 'make peanut butter cup reindeers' on to the list of all the Christmas activities i wanted to do with my kids, I came to the rapid realisation that i am expressing to my children that the Christmas story is built around Santa, his reindeer, a massive feast and presents. I typically spend a lot of effort trying to get 'stuff' ready for the 25th December so everything is just right. All baked goods, a hot meal, cake etc are all perfectly consumable and not mouldy or stale (this i honestly think is an impossible feat in itself- how on earth is it done?) but also presents are bought and under the tree perfectly wrapped but also distrubuted to others in perfect timing, not to early - not too late, just right. Lets not even comment about Christmas cards (to make them more than a simple waste of paper i try to add a witty or meaningful comment to each).

I began to feel stressed with my list before i had even started. Too much to do, too little time, and all around 3 small children who will merrily and excitably ruin all the craft and baking activities with their over enthusiastic little hands who just cant resisit poking, picking, licking, insisiting on the wrong garish colours, or suddenly halting 10 minutes in leaving me to complete the 'fun' and add demands for a concurrent shopkins toptrumps game, or bum wipe. Argh. Thanks to the awesome book i am reading at the moment (Present over perfect by Shauna Neiqvist ) i was able to realise that this stress was ridiculous, i needed a new fun way. If you dont make life fun for yourself who will?? So i crossed off a lot of the list there and then, and took a new focus - almost a whole month of advent to enjoy with my kids to learn and explore the bible story of Jesus' birth in various ways. Instantly happier.

In the end this took on the form of 4 challenges a week (ok this was still took much, but at one stage i was set on one a day!), with part of the story acted out by myself and Xss every Friday night when they were unveiled.

Anyway, part of my commitment to this was to reuse the challenges next year so i dont have to do so much work next time. Withour further ado here are our challenges based around the 4 themes of the story i pulled out (i'm currently not anglican so no alliteration is involved)(oh my goodness my first Christian pun involved in my blog, may it never happen again):

God loves us:
Say your favourite thing about each member of our family
Spend time together doing something fun
Buy and wrap up presents for each other
Buy some food for the homeless

God uses normal people:
Have fun as a normal family together
Dress up and act out some of the story
Make a sheep cake
Take time to notice the everyday people in our lives and say 'Hi'

God wants everyone to know his love:
Sing some Christmas carols
Have some fun together
Make/Send some Christmas cards
Mention something to others about your Christian life this week

God is a God who serves (as well as a King)
Make some food for someone else
Do a random act of kindness
Help someone with a job of theirs today

It was fun, but i still have a lot of work to do on chilling out and doing even less. I've omitted to mention that i also tried to create an ever growing collage on the windows illustrating the story too. Oh, and tried to make it look effortless. The collage never got past cardboard Mary and Joseph arriving at a whiteboard drawn box full of wild animal stickers (the full inn!).

pokeable candle