Advent Week 1

Sam's at the perfect age to really enjoy the buildup to the holidays.  Last year our holiday activities were minimal since we were all adjusting to life with a newborn.  This year I decided to do an advent calendar with Sam with a different Christmas activity each day.  Some were big things, some were small, all of them were fun, and it made December fly by!

On the first day we painted the numbers for our calendar and hung it up over the tv along with one of our garlands.

Gram gave us a stack of books to read in December - one each night - so our other activity was to unwrap the first book.  The one Sam chose was called

Snowball Soup

.

The next day Sam wrote his letter to Santa.  He asked Santa for a kickball, a MagnaDoodle and some Legos.  He also asked him how Rudolph's nose was doing.  I included the picture of what he got right before Christmas which was a letter

from

Santa.  So cool!

We built a fort and watched Christmas movies after school.  Sam chose a Charlie Brown Christmas movie and we popped popcorn.  Evie was asleep, thank goodness, or this would not have been as relaxing as it was.

I picked up some crafts at Hobby Lobby for Sam to choose from.  On this day he chose the Santa door hanger. 

Evie had fun just being in Sam's room.

The activity for the day the ice storm came was to hang wreaths and the rest of the garland.  I love that I chose the coldest, ice-peltiest day to have the door swung wide open.  We hussled and we got it done.  Sam did the berries on the garland.  He made a great berry-boy.

The ice storm was still going the next morning.  Good thing we had crafts planned!  

We made a handprint wreath for Sam to decorate and hang on his door.

By this time it was clear we weren't going anywhere for a few days, so it was time to rearrange activities.  We had to postpone the outside stuff and bump up the crafts.  Sam chose to decorate some ornaments to hang on his tree.

A pretty fun first week of Christmas!