December Advent: Day One

I took a free online class from Jessica Sprague called Holidays in Hand. She created a type of advent to help create a holiday Scrapbook for your family filled with prompts to get you remembering past Holidays and ideas to make this year more meaningful. I am going to try to put up my pages as I finish them here.

The photos on this page are from putting up the Christmas Tree on November 30th for Family Home Evening. We love putting up the tree because all of the kids have their own box full of ornaments and get to put their own on the tree. Every year we write down some of their favorite things about that Christmas or something special that happened throughout the year. As we put up our ornaments we all read our memories. It is a really special time for our family. Our tree topper is not a star or an angel. It is a bow from the first year Aaron and I were married and we made all our decorations on our tree. It is Aaron's job to put up the bow and we love remembering our first Christmas together and telling the kids about it. Aaron has been really busy with school and we were unsure as to whether he would be able to put up ornaments with us. As we were discussing decorating the tree, Nathan said "We can't decorate the tree without Dad, he has to put the bow on!"

The first day of the advent asked us to think of our earliest Holiday memories here are our answers:

Some of our Earliest Christmas Memories:

Tessa: Getting my goldfish and my doll, Buttercup (last year)
Ryan: When I got sad that I didn’t get an MP3 player and my sisters and brother did. Then dad helped me put together my transformer and I felt better. I still want an MP3 player.
Ada: Every year I love to cuddle up by the tree and look at the lights.
Kielle: One year the girls slept together downstairs. Ada & I couldn’t sleep so Dad brought us down some hot chocolate.
Nathan: When we lived in Provo, I remember making maracas around Christmastime in our Neighborhood Preschool. We made the maracas by folding a paper plate in half and stapling it.
Mom: When I was 5 or 6, I lived in Cary, Illinois. That year Santa hid our presents and we had to search for them. I finally found mine behind the curtains. It was a doll.
Dad: My last Christmas in California, Grandma & Grandpa Popham came from South Carolina to visit. It was a big deal. It was the first time I met them. I was 3 years old. I got a jumbo Tinker Toys set from Santa and a Farm Animals set from Grandma & Grandpa Popham. I spent hours playing with the Tinker Toys . I remember a couple days after Christmas sitting at a bar in the kitchen, making barns and stalls for the farm animals & Grandma Popham teaching me all the sounds the farm animals made.

We also were prompted to think of our Holiday Values and we came up with this list:

Our Christmas Values-
According to the Kids-
Heavenly Father, Jesus, The Holy Ghost
The Joy of Giving and Receiving
Not fighting
According to Mom & Dad-
Remembering the birth of our Saviour
Keeping the magic of Christmas alive
Spending Time as a family
Keeping low stress so we can focus on what’s important.
Making and keeping traditions.

So, what are your holiday values and what are your earliest holiday memories? We'd love to hear what you have to say.