Third Year Advent

If Advent were a big ship, we would have just fallen overboard straight into the water....while clutching several Advent Calendars to our chests....

It's just that......there are so many CHOICES here.  Most of our school classmates have at least two, if not THREE calendars for each day in Advent.  This makes it very hard for me to edit, or simplify.   First of all, I have the well-used red bags:

Alistair has our traditional set of bags, each one filled with a single chocolate,  just for him.  Since he's on the third year of not needing to share the contents with three children, he gets the liquor-filled ones ;-). 

Next up is Ian: 

Ian is going with another over-the-top assortment of truffles this year, manufactured by Lindt.  

Now, Lars: 

Lars -- and, here is where we begin our slide into decadence -- Lars repeated last year's choice and chose Lego City.  But, two weeks later, we got an offer for the Conrad Electronic Experiments Advent Calendar - also from last year.  The company has changed the contents into totally *new* experiments for 2010. 

Aaahhh...so hard to say no to that. 

So, we didn't!  We said YES!!  Yes, please!  We want that one, too!

Eliza chose a very large, and very beautiful poster of horses in the stable, with 24 little paper doors to open.  She actually gasped when she saw it inside the mountain of calendars at the store.  A gasp clearly means we have to take it home.  

Although, the more we started thinking about it,  the more we realized that a large and beautiful PAPER calendar meant the total absence of chocolate. 

Enter Eliza's Imagination:  maybe we should have 'feed bags' for each day, with a 'treat' inside? 

And so we did -- 24 little feed bags, sewn from stashed burlap & remnants, plus an irresistible yard of fabric with mice from the October Stoffmarkt for the front patches.  TWO chocolates inside each bag -- for Lars only has Legos and Electronics in his, after all, and that's not fair. ;-) Besides, the horses would want her to share.  Everyday is Christmas in a country that offers so many Advent choices. 

But, in my opinion, the best Advent Calendar of all this year was the one that ALISTAIR put together as a surprise for ME :-) -- for ME!! -- while I was in Copenhagen.  Look! 

He had Lars and Eliza decorate paper bags and they put a surprise for me inside each one!!!  I'm thrilled and giddy and impressed by this.....  my very own Advent Calendar!!! 

Next year we'll come back to Earth ;-) and have a shared Advent Bag for everyone, just like the years before living here.  

It's nice to know that at the very least we'll have no regrets when it comes to the cultural elements of a German December, since we have clearly gone the proverbial extra mile several times over, there.......am thinking, however,  it might be nice to SQUEEZE the Nativity into all this Advent Flurry at some point...... ;-) ;-)  Hmmmmmm.