So Advent has snuck up on me, y’all. Which is kind of hilarious and kind of ridiculous, given my line of work. At work, I’ve been seeing Advent coming for awhile, but at home, I’ve been focused on Thanksgiving preparations (it was such a good holiday this year! I hope yours was, too!) and somehow overlooked the fact that I needed to get our Advent calendar up. Like, tonight.

I started a tradition when my kids were in kindergarten, of an Advent Activity Calendar – each day of the calendar held a slip of paper with a family activity for that day. It was a sweet idea, and the kids loved it. But let me tell you, the expectations have ramped up each year – the boys expect new activities. They like to be surprised. In other words, I can’t keep rehashing the same old ideas. But I am tired, y’all, and I don’t have any new ideas. I barely even have the energy to do the old ideas. Also, older elementary school kids have a lot more going on than kindergarteners do, and it’s a lot harder to fit special family activities in. But Tiny Dancer got out of bed tonight to ask me why the Advent calendar wasn’t up yet, and I realized that yeah, I need to get to work.

All of this reminds me to make sure you know that I have documented (somewhat) my previous attempts at this activity, so if you are tired and out of ideas, you can see what I’ve done in the past. And hey, if you have any great ideas of things I haven’t done, shoot them to me, okay? Because I have to fill 24 little mittens with ideas, and right now I have approximately two.

Smitten Advent Garland