Counting Down 'Til Christmas

My apologies for the long-overdue therefore super-huge blog post! We dove head-first into our count down (Brad calls it "The 25 Days Of Christmas") and I have not seemed to find much extra time between cookie duty at school (fundraiser) and trying to finish decorating. :)

In case you forgot our tradition, we have various Christmas activities which include family fun, acts of kindness, and crafts. We have a calendar and there is a slip of paper to tell the kids their activity each day. They always want to check it to find out their activity first thing when they wake up.

So here are some highlights from the first half of December...

Tree Farm

Brad and I thought it would be fun to have a real tree this year. Not that we want to do it every year, but just so the kids could experience it. I grew up with live trees, and my parents even let us borrow their tree stand. It didn't take us long to decide to visit the tree farm in Seward, since we always drove past it in college. It took a while to decide on a tree. Naturally, I was the pickiest. :) Makin loved pointing out all the baby trees and joking that we needed to get one that small. Soon we were on our way.

Bags are popcorn for snack on the way there. :)

The hours following arriving home, however, helped reaffirm out content with a fake tree. First, Brad cut the trunk because it was crooked, then we cut open the tree to discover it was terribly crooked, so propped it up with magazines. The next day it fell over (with lights on and a few ornaments) so Brad then had to take it down and cut it intentionally crooked, so it would look less crooked in the stand. And he thought it was a pain to put all those branches in a plastic trunk. ;)

Bottom left is kids in "the safety zone" as they called it, where the tree couldn't fall on them. :)

Christmas Play Dough

L helped read the recipe this year! :)

Green play dough with gold sprinkles and ornaments to decorate. Whats not to love? :)

Santa

We fit in a visit to Santa and each child got to share their list, which had pictures as well. Lorelei wrote out her words but wanted me to spell them for her. I wrote Makin's to go with his picture.

Reindeer Games

I was so excited that it worked out to have friends for our 3rd Annual Reindeer Games! I wanted to make sure to have them on a Drue day, so she could be included. That meant I needed another team of three, and the Wall family was up for a visit after school! It made it so much fun to plan when I knew there could be a couple of teams, and also knowing how excited the kids would be. :) When Stephanie arrived she said, "I have been waiting ALL DAY for this!!!" and I was told their teacher heard all about it at school. :)

Games this year included: a candy cane hunt, "Reindeer, Reindeer, Santa", "Frantic Frosty" (team members took turns dressing each other like a snowman), various relays involving bows, "snowballs", and balloons, and finished with a race on whether or not you could lick the red off a candy cane before the end of the song "Candy Cane" from The Nutcracker. They were a hit! :)

After the games the kids were thrilled to order pizza and have a post Reindeer Games play date. :)

Lorelei got a face painting kit for Christmas from Aunt Heather, and it was a huge hit. As you can see Benjamin and Elijah are pirates and Makin wanted nothing to do with it. :) 

I should also mention how relieved I was that the temps were in the 40s this week!
(Yes, still cold, but doable!!!)

Angel Ornament

My kids and Drue enjoyed painting their own angel ornaments. :)

Special Breakfast

The kids commented that they didn't like always waiting until after nap until they could do their fun activity. I was (sadly) still coming up with all of my plans so the idea of breakfast popped into my head. It was so much fun to think of how to make it special and decorate the table. (And yes, this was a school morning! My weekends were already booked!) We had banana/strawberry candy canes and Santa pancakes. Was such a great way to start the day. :)

Decorating

Decorating was way behind schedule this year and was spread out over a week or two, partially because of the whole tree debacle. Getting the ornaments up on the tree this time was spread out over several days. I loved spending my Thursday morning before storytime decorating with Makin. The kids both really seem to appreciate all their special ornaments and are so excited to open each box.

Polar Express Movie Night and Hot Chocolate Bar

This year we have a traveling hot chocolate bar, because I got it all organized to take to my parents and we plan to take to the Stahls as well, so it was easy to just pull everything out for our Polar Express movie night! :) We all loved figuring out what we would put into our special drinks. :)

Sugar Cookies

I have been inconsistent with Christmas cookie baking. Some years I make time for it, some I don't. When we travel, sometimes it seems like there is no need to make cookies because I'm usually making coffee cakes and other things so its just too much. I have not make sugar cookies in way too long, and just felt like we needed to fit in at least one batch of cookies. :) The kids were super-helpers in cutting them out and frosting! I'm about able to kick back and drink coffee while they frost the whole batch...I just need to remember to make extra frosting since they are very generous little frosters. :)

Night In Bethlehem

I was excited to hear that they had a free event here in Columbus that could help us focus on the reason for the season! While we are trying to focus on Jesus' birth, it sometimes feels so much harder to make that nearly as exciting as Santa and presents. We are doing our advent calendars and of course, program practice and crafts, but it seems nice to have an actual event before Christmas Eve. :) Another church puts this together and the people of the church dress up like characters from old fashioned Bethlehem. When we walked in, we had to give our name for the census. There were various tents set up with activities that may have been going on in Bethlehem. We also got to take a sneak peek at the new baby born in a stable. :) Both kids loved it.

Just a few of the tents...clockwise from left, bread baking, mosaic, perfume making (picked their scent), jewelry making, sheep decorating, and nativity. :)

Phew! We are having a great time and looking forward to the weeks coming up and lots more fun! :)