advent and preparation

We have a tree up with beautiful white lights on it. And I have a fisher price nativity set my mom gave us a few years ago that Ivar likes to play with (and by play, I mean throw the shepherds and wisemen around). But other than that, I haven't put up one single decoration. Oh, except the barn to a nativity set that I brought upstairs a few weeks ago...but I haven't unpacked any boxes to find the people, so it's just a barn. No peeps in the stable.

I just don't have it in me this year. I'm tired. I'm queasy and I sort of don't think I can handle adding more clutter to our stuff. As it stands our house is strewn with brightly colored toys and tupperware and it already feels full. More decorations just seems like it would be too much.

In an effort to comfort myself, to give permission to this years lack of tradition-making, I have been on a quest for fun advent ideas. And I found this post and wanted to link to it so that next year, when I'm feeling spry and energized, I can be the supermom I know I can be. Just not this year.

So check out this link of fun ideas for the 25 days leading up to Christmas. She has great ideas for family outings, special nights at home, service projects for others and then writes about that super fun idea of wrapping up all of the Christmas books at the beginning of the month and then letting your kids unwrap one book a night all throughout December and reading it before bed. I love this idea.