a t-rex day advent calendar

we don't celebrate christmas or Hanuka (we might start celebrating Hanuka though in a very simple way). rob is agnostic and i am a pantheist. i plan to raise dmitri as a pantheist but anyhow not being christians rob and i have never felt all that comfortable with christmas but we i feel a need to do something fun very year and while we always celebrate solstice i wanted something more of a silly kid holiday and so i canme up with t-rex day. t-rex day used to be on the new moon in december but since becoming a mom we changed it to the 25th so that dmitri won't feel like he is left out when all his friends get to celebrate xmas every december 25th he will be celebrating t-rex day. to celebrate t-rex day you have to decide who will be breaking into your home to leave gifts. this is something for kids to do. the first year it was a t-rex thus the name. when dmitri is old enough we may write a letter to the univers every year saying we would like to invite a dinosour or a dragon or a pine tree or whatever we come up with to break in and leave some gifts while we are sleeping. then you get to spend a month decorating the house and sneaking about making gifts. a big part of t-rex day is that gifts are supposed to be hand made and fun and easy and simple. non stresful gifts. you then get to give your gift anonymously by pretending to be something like a dinosaur. anyhow this is our families way of not celebrating christmas but still having fun and we get to decorate the house and this year i want to make an advent calender. i have ben having a lot of fun browsing flickr and looking at different calendars and my favorite ones are the ones with simpole bags iether paper bags or cloth sacks with numbers on them strung up on a wall. i thimk i will be making one with bags probably paper bags. i need to decide what to put in them. when dmitri is older i may do winter seeds to plant and little notes about how that day we will take a trip to the beach or a favorite museum but he is 13 months old so whatever i fill a calendar with this year will be more for me than for him. i may actually buy some thinghs this year that he needs any ways and fill the calendar that way. he is growing out of all his cloths and his socks and i could easily fill a calendar with things i need to buy soon anyways. anyhow t-rex day is coming as is solctice! i hope to post some pics of our holiday crafts soon.