It dawned on me today that our advent calendar is done in reverse as to what is normal for most people. But I think we have a good system, so I thought I would share.
When we started our advent calendar it coincided with Eddie the Elf, aka Elf on the Shelf, making his first appearance at our house. That was three Christmas’s ago and little hands could not be trusted to not eat up all the treats at one time in the advent house. Those door are so tempting for little fingers to open, again and again. So instead of putting treats behind every door at once, it became a tradition that Eddie the Elf leaves the treats each night, for the next day.
The treat has always been one M&M per girl. This year my two-year-old is joining in, hence the three separate colors of chocolate (that are actually not the M&M brand but a more yummy variety that comes in more fun colors). I’m sure they’ll work out a system as to what girl gets what color to know who ate their M&M when.
To keep track of which door we are on, every day a piece of rolled up scrapbooking paper replaces the spot of the candy. So if they really want to know how many days are left until Christmas they can do the math, or count how many rolled up pieces of paper are left in the jar next to the advent house.
My girls like to leave notes for Eddie, to be delivered to Santa. So there is a jar for that too.
Eddie used to leave stocking stuffer like gifts as well. But when we realized all they really cared about was getting to eat chocolate before breakfast, I decided to save myself the trouble and expense of the gifts and just say yes to one tiny chocolate. For the month of December, they literally run out of bed every morning to make sure Eddie left them their chocolate.
And yes, once we did forget!
