Pre-Christmas

If you know me at all (which you BETTER if you are reading this blog), you know that I am a planner. One of my favorite mantras is "If you FAIL to PLAN...you PLAN to FAIL." Anyway, I plan out the whole month of December. There is a fun holiday activity every night. Some are big things like "Go caroling and deliver Christmas goodies to our neighbors" and others are small like "Make paper snowflakes and hang them in the window." Lots of them involve favorite Christmas treats and Christmas movies. Some were traditions from my own childhood, but most of the fun ideas were borrowed from other people or created on our own in the past few years.  The kids and I make a paper chain to count down the days 'til Christmas and the activity for each night is written on the chain link. I also have a master calendar with all the activities so I can easily make adjustments as needed. Of course, life happens, and we often had to change or postpone the activity for the night, but we were able to eventually do everything that we wanted to do.

 

Would you believe it if I told you that I didn't take out my camera once between Dec 2 and Dec 23?!?! Yep, that's right. So none of the fun is captured for posterity. But that's okay. We have our memories and I've got my Master Calendar if we need help remembering the fun of our Grinch Party or the Live Nativity out on the farm, or the Secret Santa Shopping.

 

One impromptu activity (Dec 2) that the kids really enjoyed was building the Lego Christmas Toy Shop. Eric got this as a Christmas gift last year and we set all the pieces carefully aside in a ziploc bag with the Christmas decorations (rather than let them get assimilated into our Lego Room) so the kids can rebuild it, without missing pieces, each year. They had a great time once they got past the bickering over who was building what.

 

 

***

 

The next time I pulled out the camera was Dec 23. We had a Christmas Eve eve party. Since we have cousins come over on Christmas Eve, we decided to do some of the quieter, calmer things the night before. We watched Mr. Kruger's Christmas and some other Christmas Nativity videos. Then we read the Christmas Story out of the Bible in Luke 2. After that each of the kids got to open one special gift from us. It was new pajamas.

The girls got Hello Kitty

The boys got Angry Birds

I think it is fun how when my kids are lined up by age,

their respective heights form a nearly uniform step.

I know that won't last forever.

My prediction: Sadie will end up taller than Renae and Colby taller than Mason.

 

 

 

Then we started a new tradition, each kid picked a favorite Christmas book and read it out loud to the rest of the family. It was really fun for everyone.

Mason, the stinker, chose to read a baby, lift-a-flap board book.

 

Eric is a great read-aloud reader. He does fun voices and had all the kids transfixed.

 

Our sad little Christmas tree barely made it through the holidays. See the big dark patch around the middle and another on the right side 2/3 of the way up. Slowly but surely the pre-lit lights are burning out in big patches. Sad. But we got a new star...so that's nice. I guess next year, we'll just have to string lights on our semi-pre-lit tree and be fine with it.