Around the World in 25 Days

Hunting for interesting activities for each holiday has become a little more tricky since we moved from the heart of constant cultural exposure aka the DC area. We do have a few fun events here like the Sea World wonders, Lights on the Riverwalk, Bass Pro Shop with all its free fun including the free Santa picture!, and this weekend's Handel Messiah concert just to name a few.

Today while reading the Friend Magazine (a magazine the Church of Jesus Christ publishes for young children), I stumbled upon a working advent calendar of sorts. It was called "Christmas Around the World". As we read each one, I realized that the activities mentioned would be fun to do as a family and kind of culturally uplifting. I have already tweaked some of the ideas to fit our circumstances. For example, day 6 tells us that Australians will go to the beach and sing carols. We do have beaches not too far from our house, but the Sabbath day isn't a day for us to make a day trip to the beach. So, instead, we switched the 5 day's activities from Germany and the candy left in the shoe (ok the candy will be substituted with a clementine orange) to allow us either a day trip to the beach with caroling or heading to Sea World on Saturday to listen to all the carols while we play in the artificial beach fronts.

You should check it out. There are some amazing things to do. I am sure thankful for all the research the people put into the calendar so I could have a no brainer Christmas time.

PS Enjoy browsing around on the website. There are a lot of great things even for those who are not of our faith. My kids love looking at this site on Sundays to help keep their thoughts focused on the One who brought the First Real Gift of Christmas. If you want, there are pictures that can be cut out and place on each day to remind you of what you did. I think I will just blog about it.