For the past several years, I have been wanting to make an advent activity calendar of some sort, but haven't gotten around to anything fancy. This year, there were many holiday related activities I definitely wanted to do with the family, and I knew I wanted to make the announcement of each activity part of the fun, so I made a simple advent calendar I found on Pinterest. As December 1st quickly approached, I kept forgetting to buy Christmas themed scrapbook paper, so at the 11th hour, I just used what I had on hand to create our 2013 Christmas activity grove of paper trees. Sealed inside each tree was a piece of paper announcing the day's activity. The boys took turns every morning either opening or reading the paper. They loved it and asked several times to do it every year.
Some of our activities included:
Putting up Christmas decorations. I always get stuck putting together our fake tree and stringing the lights. Both are jobs I do not much enjoy. Why is it that no one wants to help with those tasks? This year the boys pretty much put on every ornament by themselves, being very cautious not to put anything breakable within Claire's reach. The tree definitely looked like it was decorated by children, but this year, I was totally ok with that.
Visiting the holiday lights display. I wasn't terribly impressed. It was worth doing once. It will not be a new tradition.
Decorating a gingerbread house. Ours might have been purchased two years ago on clearance for $.50 after Halloween, but it was a gingerbread house and that's all the matters. The boys didn't complain. They might have, perhaps, asked why there was a witch, but they had no problem sticking her on their Christmas gingerbread house.
Watching two city Christmas parades. The second one we attended was held at dusk and into the dark. It was cold. We were not adequately prepared. But it was neat. There were actual real floats, with lights, and lots of horses, that pooped on the road and then the later parade participants threw their candy into the poop. It added an extra element to the parade. A photographer from the newspaper took pictures of the kids. As he took the pictures he said he was from the newspaper. What proof did he have? I thought it would be an easy way for some creep to collect tons of pictures of little kids for his collection. But later we did indeed find their pictures on the newspaper website.
Attending an annual gingerbread cookie decorating party.
Family Christmas gathering at Mema's. Up until this year, it has always been on Christmas night, but with the expanding family, this year it was held the weekend before Christmas. My grandmother loves buying throughout the year cheap crap nobody wants and playing a white elephant game at the Christmas gathering. Nathanael was proud of himself for "stealing" a golf set from Max. Max wasn't very happy about it, but Nathanael sure has loved that set! Claire stole some coasters from someone else, but I don't think they really cared.
Watching the Grinch movie and having Grinch floats.
We did many other fun activities throughout the season which I did not take pictures of, including going to the ward Christmas party, baking and delivering goodies, taking a carriage ride to see the Christmas lights, and other simpler things like reading Christmas stories before bed. But, one of the best activities was our Christmas Eve family fun day downtown.
This year, wanting to have time for our own family traditions on Christmas Eve, we opted to spend the day with just us. Mid-morning, we headed downtown. We found a suitable restaurant to have lunch and then went to look at the Festival of Trees.
After spending the rest of the afternoon relaxing at home, we headed to the locally known Christmas lights house once it was sufficiently dark.
Finally, we opened our Christmas Eve pajamas, were visited by the kids' personal elves (Peter, Buddy, and James), who left hot chocolate, popcorn, and a Christmas story book, and went to bed.
On Christmas Day, the kids read their letter from Santa, opened their presents and then we headed off to have Christmas twice more before calling it quits on the Christmas season.
1 comment:
A- horse poop makes a parade a sporting event.
B. Thomas said that if you'd had a funnel cake, then you'd be singing a different tune about the lights display.
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