Advent Calendar, Books, and Cards

I explained earlier in the month a new tradition we started for unwrapping a new story each night of Advent. We had quite a few Christmas and winter stories at home already. We added to the collection with some library books:
The Animals Christmas Carol
The Snowy Day
The Very First Christmas
Polar Bear Night
A Child was Born
Why Christmas Trees Aren’t Perfect
These books totalled up to 19--almost enough to get us through until our vacation.
For each day of Advent each child contributed $1 towards feeding hungry babies. Today (the day we celebrated Jesus's birthday) we took out the cash and wrote a check to Samaritan's Purse as a birthday present to Jesus. We also made a Birthday Cake for Jesus and sang "Happy Birthday". I *hope* we can continue this tradition and that it will become meaningful to the kids over the years.

We also have been proudly displaying our Christmas cards. We love receiving them and track which state they arrived from. Cal can now easily locate Oregon, California, and New Jersey (the states where most of our cards arrived from).