Advent

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent and I hope you all are anxiously awaiting the beginning of a beautiful season of celebrating that Jesus came and is coming again! What good news!

For those of you who do not know Advent is a Latin word meaning Coming. The season of Advent is a time of preparing our hearts for the fact that Christ came and is coming again. Traditionally people use an advent wreath with 4 candles going around and 1 center Christ candle to light. You light one each Sunday leading to Christmas and the center candle Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. For more info on the meaning and depth of the season just google it... there are so many resources. With the ages of my children we don't go too in depth on the meaning behind the candles we just light them and say"He's Coming" "He's Coming" and each candle our voice is more animated and excited.

I just wanted to encourage you to spend the whole season celebrating the only ONE worthy of a month long birthday party where all the attention is placed on Him and the fact the He is a perfect gift to all of us. Try to use each of the symbols of the season to teach the TRUTH of the season! Remind the kids that the tree points up - not down to the presents but up to the TRUE PRESENT who is very PRESENT to us all and loves when we look to Him and seek Him in our daily lives. Remind them that the gifts are reminders of the ONE TRUE GIFT we have in JESUS! Every symbol that is going to be in front of their faces for the next month is an opportunity to draw their hearts back to the one who made them.

Our family spends each night before bedtime going through a special Advent book beginning December 1st. In it there are beautiful doors on each page that you open and read part of the Christmas story from. Each day we get to open one more day and by Christmas morning we have read the whole story straight from the bible and the kids have most of it memorized since we start from the beginning every night. The pictured book is an heirloom addition that I am not sure is available anymore but I know they have another red version you can still buy.

After we read the story we talk about what we read then we all get to pick one Christmas song of worship to sing to Jesus and of course we finish the night of in prayer to our favorite Birthday Boy ever! I find these times so wonderful and they really help us keep our hearts focused on the real reason for the season.

Dinner Devotion

I think almost every family has the tradition of taking time at the dinner table to thank God for his blessings and share with each other what they are thankful for most from the past year. Just in case some of you do not do something like that I would encourage you to give it a go. It's my favorite part of thanksgiving! After the food is served (don't make people eat cold food) we just go around the table and each person shares what they are thankful for.

The only twist to this is that in the past couple of years I have called the family members that can not be with us and typed out what they had to say on small strips. Under everyone's plate I put somebody else's thoughts. So along with sharing each person own things they are thankful for they read who ever's paper they got. I know this means a lot to my mom and MIL as they have big families and it helps us feel like we are together.

Don't forget to save those and keep a binder (yes, I have a binder for just about everything) with previous years comments. One year about a week before thanksgiving I even sent an e-mail to everyone including the families "thankful fors" from the previous year to remind everyone to get thinking and feel blessed because no matter what your circumstances are if you have access to this blog I have a feeling YOU ARE VERY BLESSED!

Oh and one more suggestion... read a part of the Thanksgiving Proclomation by Lincoln.... it's got some good stuff in it!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Tree of Thanks

Here is something super easy, fun and meaningful we did this year...

Each night as we did our evening devotions focused on thankfulness and our many blessings the goal was to have each family member add another leaf to our tree. We just wrote something we wanted to thank Jesus for and signed our names then picked a branch and stapled it on. We had a great time with it and then when my sweet little nephew went to heaven our tree stopped growing for awhile. Thank you to all of you who have been praying for our family. Although I long to see my little nephew again right now I can say that I am so thankful for his life and all he did to further God's kingdom in his short 9 years on earth. What a blessing to be his Aunt. He wanted to live his life in ministry and he did and his life story will continue to minister to many for years. I hope to start growing our tree again tomorrow and am thankful for the big reminder in my home of all we are thankful for and most importantly WHO we are thankful to! It's pretty special that on our tree this year are the words heaven and so many things relating to what our family was in the midst of this year and the innocent child like approach our 5 and 3 year old had on it. I will for sure be keeping our leaves this year and starting next years with them.

More Ideas:

Thankful Turkey:

My sister's mother in law does something I hope to do in my home eventually. Last year I got the hand prints and this year I will as well in hopes next year I have enough to start my turkey. I think it is one of the best ways I have heard of to display previous years blessings in a fun, cute and special way. So what you do is have each family member trace their hand and write on it what they are most thankful for that year. The next year you will use these laminated hand prints to be a big turkey tail of a turkey body that you draw and put somewhere to display on your wall. This is super special because not only is it a cute handmade decor item but it shows the growth of the children's hand prints, the growth of the families hearts as they mature and go from being thankful for toys, to people, to grace and so on and you can even include the people you spend your Thanksgiving with and then it is a trip down memory lane as you see hand prints of people who you have been with in years past. My sister loves this turkey in her MIL's house and enjoys reading her hubby's words from his teenage years when he said things like "I'm thankful we only have to do this once" to his adult years and her name made it on a hand print! I will try and get her to take a picture this year and post it if I do.

Thankful Tree:

For those of you who move around a lot this is especially good for your families. It's the same idea as above but instead of hand prints each person picks a special leaf near your home to write what they are most thankful for on. The person who shared this idea with me said they use contact paper on them and then write with permanent markers. It;s special to them because they have leaves from several states and also all the fun things they were all thankful for hung on the wall for a beautiful fall decoration.

Don't forget if you have some great ideas for any of the holidays to share them with me (amy@honorhimalways.com). And check back often as December is sure to have lots of good stuff on here! I will be posting before the end of the week on Advent as the season is soon to begin and I hope to encourage you all to participate in the celebration that He has come and is coming again!

Blessings!