Our Stockings and Advent Calendar

Friday my husband worked all day, so it was just me and Audrey hanging out (and Tony too, of course). When he got back, we put up our stockings and our Advent calendar.

This is my husband's stocking. We hung everything from the same twine that held our Thanksgiving leaves.

This is Audrey's stocking. Would you believe she took this picture herself? Not to bad for a 21 month old.

Here they are hung side-by-side. I took pictures of the progress.

And mine joins in. The red and white ones are hand made. I got them from an adorable shop downtown. They were actually supposed to be priced $30 each, but on one of them the tag was mislabeled, so the owner gave them to me for $10 a piece. You can't beat that with a stick. They only had two, so we got Audrey a cream one to match. Next year I'm gonna go back and see if they have two more in a similar style for her and Tony. I absolutely love them. MUCH better than the stockings that we had since we were dating that they replaced.

Here's my husband hanging up the cats' stockings. They have the same stockings that we used to have. The $1 stocking with the fur that falls off and the names written in cheap glitter glue. He refuses to let me buy them new stockings.

Here's a close up, with a stocking for Mike as well. He's an honorary member of the kitty clan. He's so well known in this house, Audrey knows his name, what animal he is, and what sound he makes. If we're out and she sees someone with LSU stuff on, she shouts "Hi, Mike the Tiger! ROAR!" It's adorable.

This is what my monkey child did while my husband hung stuff. They say girls are more calm than boys. If this is true, then Tony will be on top of the tv. Oy. But it'll be fun to watch my monkey children play together.

Here's my husband hanging our snowflakes for our Advent calendar. No, he's not standing on anything. He is really tall. And I was sitting down on the couch, although that didn't put me THAT much shorter than when I stand up.

Almost done with all of the snowflakes.

When he finished hanging the snowflakes, I hung up the cards I made. Each card has the day of December it is on the front and a Scripture on the back. I did the birth of Jesus in Luke. I started when Gabriel came to Mary, skipped through Mary's visit to Elizabeth, picked back up at the census, and ended when the shepherds worshiped the Lord. 24 in all.

That's what it looks like from the other side. There's all the verses.

That's what they look like all hung up with our stockings on either side. I really like how it turned out. What we're going to do is flip the card over for each day as we read the verses. And that way, on Christmas Eve, we would have read the story of Jesus's birth to our little family. Can't get better than that. And the total cost was $8, and that was for the snow flakes. The cards, the twine and the clothespins I had on hand. Not to bad considering we're going to keep them and do it every year. We might incorporate other aspects, but I like the tradition of it and keeping the time about the birth of our Lord and not the presents under the tree.

Are you doing any Advent/countdown/special things this year to celebrate Christmas?

Oh, and by the way, I really wish people would not get so huffy about the whole CHRISTmas vs. Xmas thing. If they'd do their research, they would realize that Xmas is a completely CHRISTian thing. The "X" is the Greek letter for Chi, which is the first letter in Christ. It was used similarly to the fish symbol by the early church to speak of Christ without persecution in public. The "mas" comes from Latin in the old church deriving from an actual mass celebration. So it really was an abbreviated way to write Christmas and denote a celebration of Christ in the early days. It's nice to think of how despite how much man tries to dismiss the Lord and remove Him, He is still very much the center of everything. *Stepping off of soap box now*