Story #39

Once upon a time there was a crazy teenage girl who loved Christmas so much that she created her very own advent calendar. On a long piece of butcher paper she wrote "Christmas is . . . " and then drew 25 holiday pictures like a candle, a tree, an angel, Santa, etc. . . then she covered the little pictures with numbered squares and pulled one off each day of December. After Christmas was over, she carefully rolled up her advent masterpiece and saved it to hang on her bedroom wall the next few Christmases.

Later this crazy teenage girl grew up to become a mother
who was still so crazy about Christmas that she created all kinds of advent adventures to help her cute kids count down the days until December 25. One year little Emily and little Shelly did a project a day to decorate "Merry Christmas walls". Other years little Betsy, little Tom and little Hayley colored an ornament each day of December to hang on their own paper trees. Other Decembers they read a story each day . . . opened a surprise each day . . . had tiny treasure hunts each day . . . or had daily Christmas quizzes. One year after the girls in this family grew up they even sewed fabric advent calendars to hang in their own homes. 

The Christmas crazy wife's husband also caught the Christmas spirit. He was more generous than crazy and came up with the plan of doing "Twelve Days of Christmas". Every year they would choose a family, friend or neighbor and secretly deliver them surprises during the 12 days before Christmas. The last delivery (often a big box of groceries) was on Christmas Eve. And all deliveries required the whole family's help with wrapping, packing, coming up with disguises if needed, sneaky delivering/running, and watching to make sure no one was caught.
 

Not surprisingly, the Christmas crazy mother is now a goofy Grandma who creates countdown projects for her 13 grandchildren. Just last year she made an advent calendar out of cute pictures they all drew for her. The goofy Grandma lost her original advent calendar long, long ago . . . but she will probably never lose the desire to count the days until Christmas happily every December after.

Merry 24 days before Christmas!
Love, Grandma