Advent calendars

For some reason, this year I've been fascinated by advent calendars. I absolutely love Christmas and this year, with all of the stress and emotion we've been dealing with, the season is touching my heart a little more than seasons past. To help my children get into things one day at a time we've been opening a little window on their chocolate advent calendars every day (they look a lot like these) I made a bunch of little advent ornaments for our mini tree (paper clips glued to the backs of fun buttons, felt candy canes, and some mini ornaments from the dollar store), but I'm still looking for ideas for next year. This website (here) has a very cute idea that wouldn't take up storage space, can hold things besides candy, and is infinitely personalizable (<- is that a word?). On the other hand, there is virtue in being able to reuse an old calendar (here, second craft down). The longer lasting ones look like more work to make though. Princess Butterfly just loves a paper chain that they made at church and faithfully takes one link off every day without prompting from me at all.

Does anyone else do the advent thing?

This year I'm missing some things that had become tradition for my side of the family. The huge dinner at Uncle S and Aunt C's house, Christmas morning at my Grandparents' house, collaborating on the stockings with my mom. It's kind of fun this year to know that we'll be able to do our own thing for Christmas. What will we do? Where will we go? What will we eat? This is our 6th Christmas as a Man and Me unit (though we've more than doubled in number over the years) and we have yet to have a Christmas where we have selected all of the events of the day. I'm feeling just a bit lost but excited, and keenly missing my extended family but really looking forward to a day of just us. I'll be sure to take pictures. ;)