Advent

Today is the first day of December! Do you know what that means? It means that it's time for advent calendars!

When I was growing up my family always had advent calendars. My mom came from Germany when she was 5 years old and she had them when she was little so she wanted us to have them too. Advent calendars are more of a European thing then an American thing though. I don't recall many of my friends doing it when I was younger and I still know very few people that do it. Anyway. My mom had quite a few advent calendars and each of us children would get to pick one to hang up in our room and every day we would get to open up a flap and see what was behind it. It was always the most fun thing for me and I wanted to be able to share this experience with my children.

Problem is, America isn't very big on advent calendars. You don't find them all over the store like you do in Europe. So I went online. I was able to find some very cute ones at A Bit of Britain and Vermont Christmas Company. I ended up getting quite a few of them because I couldn't decide which ones were the cutest and I figured that my kids will use them for years to come like I did when I was little. This year though we're hanging them all up!

Gabriel had so much fun opening them up this morning! He wanted to open up more but I had to remind him that we only open up one a day!

I really wanted to get a 3D advent calendar that you can open, like with drawers and be able to put a piece of candy in them. But all the ones that I found that were cute were already sold out or extremely expensive. Next year I'll have to remember to start looking for one earlier before they are all gone! I also had a had time find more cute manger scene ones, so if you know a place where I can go for those let me know!

Do you do advent calendars? Did you do them when you were a child?

Happy First Day of December and Happy Adventing!