Ok, so we have had our Christmas tree up since, I don’t know, November 5th or something like that! Yes, that is well in advance of Christmas and before Thanksgiving, I know. But we have perfectly good reasons for that. One, I absolutely love the Christmas season. Not necessarily the commercialization of Christmas, but the fact that it is Jesus’ birthday! And what a blessing to be able to bestow upon Jackson.

Two, we were going to be out of town the several weekends before Thanksgiving and after, meaning our Christmas tree would be up for all of like a month. And that just is not good enough for this mommy!

Three, if you could just see Jackson’s face light up when the Christmas tree lights get turned on. And this year, he actually helped put all the ornaments on the tree. Just to be able to see Jackson’s face light up would be reason enough to keep the tree up all year long!

It also means that it is that time of year where we count down the days to Jesus’ birthday. Growing up the only thing I remember about advent or the countdown to Christmas are those calendars from Walgreens that have chocolate behind every day. I didn’t want that for Jackson. I wanted to teach him the importance of Christmas. That it is not just a time when Santa brings presents, which by the way I am super thankful that Jackson has no clue that Santa brings presents or that he even gets presents for Christmas yet!! Whoohoo!! One more year of not having a Christmas wish list for these parents.

Two years ago (this will mark our third year) I started doing a countdown to Jesus’ birthday that includes random acts of kindness. It is not everyday, but every other day and the “other” days he gets a special treat in his box. Some of our activities include, bring coffee to your teacher (in this case it is our daycare teacher), feed the birds, adopt a senior citizen at the local nursing home, donate a book, tape change to a vending machine, make cookies for the police station or fire station, this year we are making cookies for the garbage man because Jackson is in love with the garbage man, donate food to the food pantry, make a cake and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and we started early in the month of November by doing the shoe boxes for Samaritan’s Purse.

So, we may have had our tree up for over a month now, but we are celebrating the birth of Jesus in our house by giving back to those who are not as fortunate as we are.

Make sure to check the blog out next week as I will share with you all about our Christmas celebration with Heather and her family!!