Celebrating Advent

I have never whole heartly done anything spectacular to prepare my kids for the Christmas season in celebrating the birth of Jesus or anything meaningful at all really. I did the paper chocolate one at Aldi when Kyron was little, and I did grab them this year for fun (What kid doesn't like chocolate?) but I wanted to do something different this year.
Two of the three are old enough now to be learning more about why we celebrate Christmas and having a giving heart as His did in sending his son to die for us. So I came up with some things I wanted to do with them this year as new traditions. Having a new house in a new town and not having any plans with family to go home for the holidays, we have so much time to spend with just our family, making memories and starting new traditions was exciting to think about!
So I made my list of a few things I wanted to do. Then last night as I sat in bed I thought why not combine our family activities with advent and celebrate them together! Do something as a family each day to spend more time together and doing things for others. A little late on the planning...which I wouldn't recommend. December 1st came up real fast.
Today was day 1 and we made our string of days (again, lack of planning) hopefully next year we can have a fancier version, but this works and the kids got to help. 

Now we know how many days are left so I don't hear "Is tomorrow Christmas?" every day for the next 24 days! 

 Then for our activity (nothing fancy, have I talked about planning?!) I had them make an ornament for the tree. Everything I had here so I didn't have to go out or spend money (best options) so we will see how far we get with that. 

Instead of posting each day I'll be doing a weekly blog for our activities unless you follow me on Instagram you can see our pictures each day.
What are some fun things you do for advent?