Traditions.....

Last year, during the holiday season, I was a little out of sync. We had moved a few times and by the time December rolled around we were staying in Tyler's grandma's house while she was in Arizona for the winter and we were in between houses. I am very grateful for her generosity! But it was a little bit difficult for me to get into the Christmas spirit when I was living in a home that wasn't mine. I could not spend my days decorating, baking and blasting Christmas music to dance and sing to all day. But I did learn something... While all those activities are fun and make wonderful memories, Christ's birth and the blessings of the atonement and

our families are really what make Christmas special.

This year, I have my own place to decorate, bake in, and embarrass myself with some serious holiday tunes... and don't you worry I will be taking full advantage of that! But I wanted to make sure Christ was central in my family's celebrations this year so I have come up with my very first Pooley Family Tradition. We have lots of great traditions with each sides of our family but this will be the first one that is unique to just Tyler, the kids, and I. So I am excited!

I call it the Nativity Advent.

I bought a cute little 10 piece Nativity set. Then I found 25 Christmas messages consisting of scriptures, talks from the Friend magazine, url's for christmas videos on LDS.org, and explanations of what each christmas symbol represents. I plan to wrap each of the 10 pieces of the nativity set individually with a little message and a piece of candy for each of us. Then I will wrap the remaining messages with some candy as well. The baby Jesus figurine will be wrapped in a different paper than the rest of the gifts. After we set up our tree tonight, all of the gifts will go under the tree and they will be the ONLY presents we put there. Each day the kids will get to pick one gift to open. We will read the message, talk about the role of the figurine (if they picked a gift with one of the 10 figurines) and enjoy the candy. Then we will set up the nativity display piece by piece. Christmas morning (we will probably be at my parents so we'll have to bring Him with us) we will open the last gift, which will be baby Jesus, before we open any other gifts and read the Christmas story from Luke chapter 2.

I want my kids to remember while all the toys and presents and santa are so very fun... Christ is the most wonderful of all gifts.

So I am looking for other fun traditions to start with my family too. You guys have any good ones? Please share!!