Advent Train

Last year, I kept eyeballing an advent calendar at L.L. Bean. It was in the shape of a train and since Benjamin's nursery theme was trains, I've been partial to carrying on with the train theme in other areas of his life (such as his train birthday cake when he was 1 and his Christmas needlepoint stocking with a train on it.) I kept checking the website but hesitated in purchasing it because it was still a bit expensive despite the sale price. Then, one day, I realized that L.L. Bean was sold out of the trains. I was so disappointed.

Imagine how tickled I was to find that it was randomly offered for sale again in January! I immediately bought it and have been looking forward to starting the Advent calendar tradition with the boys ever since it arrived at our doorstep. I love that it is so big and that some of the days have nifty little drawers while other days are represented by the cargo of Christmas trees! Benjamin and Samuel are still pretty young so I had a tough time coming up with appropriate goodies to tuck into each day. I finally found a few items in the $1 aisles of Michael's and Target. I decided to put in different stickers and candy cane Hershey kisses and those little pellets that melt in warm water and turn into fun shaped sponges in the larger drawers. The Christmas trees were a bit trickier. Some sparkly stickers would fit into the narrow cavities and so would the sponges but for other days, I had to write a message on a piece of paper and tuck that inside. Some of the messages include "Let's make a cookies!" or "Let's play with wind-up toys." So far the boys are really enjoying checking the train for new surprises every morning. Benjamin is especially digging the sparkly stickers!