Advent without Alvin

Last year when we were putting away Christmas decorations, we allowed our precious Alvin to stick around while everything else went to the attic. After all, in our house, Alvin can be touched after Christmas. I remember finding Alvin in the top of the closet around spring cleaning time and I remember telling Daddy to go put Alvin away. Away is the mystery. Where did we put Alvin??

With that being said, we took on advent a little differently this year. **We didn't get another elf.  We received a letter from Alvin letting us know he had been promoted to Chief Elf at Santa's shop and can no longer spend his days sleeping and his nights making messes. So instead of coming to life in our house every night, he is sending us a Christmas book every morning, nicely wrapped and ready for bed time. He also sent us a Advent chain to count the days until Christmas. On each chain was a scripture reading/devotion for us to read each night.

Alvin really wanted AR and Westin to understand that Jesus is like the missing piece to the puzzle in the stories of the bible. From Adam and Eve to Noah on to Moses and King David, Jesus is the center of God's great story of salvation. So during those 24 days, we read from the Old Testament and the New Testament {21 Old Testament stories all relating to Jesus' coming followed by 3 stories about the birth of Christ}, putting the pieces together to help us understand that everything we do should point to Jesus!! Each of these stories were read from the first book they got from Alvin, a new story book bible.

I must say this was really fun and much more meaningful! Since AR really missed Alvin this year and asked several times if she was going to get to see him again, he will definitely return next year. However, I am going to brainstorm some ways to combine the two!

Merry Christmas!!