Advent Jesse Tree

One of our new family traditions we started this year was to have a Jesse Tree. A Jesse Tree is similar to an advent calendar but in addition to a countdown to Christmas, each day you go through a short family bible devotion starting with creation and ending with Jesus' birth. After Brian would read us the devotion each night Daniel got to open an ornament that corresponded to the reading and hang it on the tree.

A bunch of other ladies that wanted to start this tradition with their families and I got together in November for a Jesse Tree ornament exchange. A few weeks prior, we had divided up the 24 ornaments needed for the Jesse Tree so each gal was responsible for making 14 copies each of two ornaments. Over dessert, we passed out the ornaments and left with a full set of beautiful, unique ornaments for our tree.

Initially I wasn't too sure how much Daniel would like participating in this new tradition but he LOVED it. Each night before getting ready for bed he would run to the couch for the devotion and excitedly open the little gift bag that held that day's ornament. He loved the little advent tree more than our big tree and when he would get other ornaments from people he would hang them up on the advent tree too. On the day after Christmas, he was so disappointed that we were all finished with advent. We explained to him that we would get to do it again next year and I am so excited about our new tradition!