December 1: Adopt a Christmas Angel

Our first Christmas as a family of three is quickly approaching. It's easy to get wrapped up (pun not intended) in the gifts, decorations, and hype of Christmas. To keep from straying too far from the true reason for the season our little family is giving a new meaning to the advent calendar. When I was researching the idea of using an advent calendar for our count down to Christmas Day, I saw a bunch of calendars that had little treats inside. Although many of these were precious I wanted something a little more personal to our family. So I found this idea on Pinterest (I know just assume from now on that everything I do comes from Pinterest) where instead of having little treats that the kids get every day, you do an activity together as a family and read a scripture from the bible. My calendar definitely has some kinks that need to be worked out  but I'm confident that I will get them all sorted out before next year.  Since yesterday kicked off the official Christmas season in the Darby house we did our first family activity-- Adopt a Christmas Angel.

We actually shopped for the gifts a few days before but we took last night to wrap them and spend time doing it as a family. It was so much fun! Allison loved the wrapping paper and crawling all over her daddy. My heart is full. Driving to work last week I heard on Candy 95 that it was time for the annual Christmas Angel Adoptions. Basically there are 700 kiddos in the Bryan/College Station area who, if not adopted, won't have anything to open Christmas morning. Our family is so incredibly blessed that we feel moved every year to adopt a kid who is less fortunate and try to give them a great Christmas. This year we adopted a 6 month old little girl. We had a lot of fun shopping for her! Allison even helped pick out the toys.

These toys have been Allison approved!  She was definitely a little confused why she wasn't getting to play with them  slobber all over them.

But in all seriousness, we're getting her a box and a roll of wrapping paper for Christmas. She'll be the happiest kid in the world.

We also started Decking-the-Halls yesterday as well...Allison really liked the Christmas tree. Unfortunately so does the cat. Hopefully we'll still have a Christmas tree when we get home tonight.

Fingers Crossed. Also, I need to learn to take better pictures with my phone...clearly.