Advent

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:  And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;  Isaiah 11:1-2

Today is the first day of advent.  Did you know that?  I didn't! LOL  I remembered around 7 o'clock this evening.  Fortunately, we had dug through enough boxes in the garage we knew where our Christmas books, which is where my Advent books also live outside of the Christmas season.

The kids were very excited to start our Advent traditions.  We didn't do anything for Advent when I was growing up, so this is all new to me as well.  About 3 years ago I decided to start celebrating the anticipation of our Saviors birth.  It has been a wonderful time of learning and growing and focusing on the Christ's joyous birth.

This year we will be returning to follow along Jotham as he travels to find his family in Arnold Ytreeide's Jotham's Journey.  We really enjoy Ytreeide's triology and alternate each year, which has brought us back to Jotham.  My younger boys don't remember the story from 3 years ago, so it's all new to them. :)

We will also be doing a Jesse Tree using Ann Voskamp's beautiful devotional, The Glorious Coming.

Since Advent snuck up on me (I'm still recovering from Thanksgiving! LOL), I told the kids tomorrow we will put together the Jesse Tree ornaments and go purchase our advent candles.  They were very excited to hear about our planned outing.  Now let's see how excited they are when I tell them they need to get all their school work done FIRST, then we'll go buy our supplies and break out the glue and card stock. ;-)