As a family the month before Christmas is very special to us. For our first Christmas together Todd and I started a family tradition of celebrating Advent. It has evolved through the years as we've added children to our family and as they are getting older we can really do more in depth things. Also because we live overseas we can really shape what our kids experience and learn through the holidays. I think last year was the best Christmas experience ever. We taught the kids about why Jesus came to earth and slowly told and taught them His birth story. And we lead up to Christmas by praying for unreached people groups, letting the kids pick out gifts from Samaritan's Purse online catalog and we ended with a huge birthday party celebration on the 25th. For us we chose not to open any presents but to focus the whole day on celebrating Jesus. The kids made Him a birthday card and birthday hats which turned into being Wise Men hats. They went on a scavenger hunt through the house answer questions of Jesus' birth story to get to the next spot all searching for Jesus. They were dressed up as Wise men carrying a gift bag that had their present they had picked of from the catalog written on a piece of paper inside. The end of the hunt our "three wise men" found the star and baby Jesus. They were so excited and felt like they had traveled far to find Jesus. Their faces and expressions showed us that they really got it. The best part of the day was that no one asked once about the presents under our tree. We really want to teach them that it isn't about presents, Christmas is about Jesus.
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