Christmas Advent

I decided I wanted to try an advent calendar this year since I've never done it before. I purchased a bunch of Christmas/winter related books for super cheap from the dollar store and DI to go along with the ones we already had. Then I wrapped each of them individually, one for each night until Christmas.

All the books under the tree

Every night Shasta got to pick a present from under the tree and open it and that's what we read for her bedtime story. She thought it was so fun. Bedtime has never been so exciting!

Side note: I let her pick out her own jammies!

In the beginning she constantly asked me if it was time for another present. About two weeks into it she started to realize it was only for bedtime, but it didn't make it any easier to wait. She would ask me throughout the day if it was bedtime yet. She also didn't catch on right away that every present was a book. Every night as she was opening it I would ask her, "what is it?!" and she would say, "a present"! After maybe a week and a half her answer to that question became, so matter of fact, "it's a book"!

Who knew bedtime could be so fun?

There was only one time that she got into them when she wasn't supposed to. I was in the kitchen making dinner when I heard the sound of paper tearing. I hurried over to the other side of the tree to find Shasta sneaking a present.

Thankfully I was within earshot and stopped her before she got too far. We talked about what the presents were for, and I may have told her if she got into them again without permission I would take them all way, but she never tried to open another one without permission. 

It was a fun advent for us to count down the days until Christmas. I was a little worried it would take away from the excitement of opening presents on Christmas morning, but after the first present when she realized it wasn't a book, she was pretty excited to open more! I think it's a tradition we'll continue. And in case you were wondering. I boxed up all the Christmas books after the season and we'll reuse them year after year. I plan to replace some each year considering they're not all in the best shape since some were from a second hand store and the ones from the dollar store are pretty simple minded. But they work for now.