Advent Week 3

Pops was nice enough to take some photos during Sam's sleepover.  He and Gram and Pops made Christmas cookies and went to NorthPark Mall to hear Santa tell a story.  Great job on your photos, Pops.

Having made cookies with Gram the day before, Sam was ready to roll up his sleeves for our Advent activity of the day - make cookies to take to our neighbors.  We decided to try a new cookie we'd never made, or even eaten, before - a Linzer cookie.  We made the dough, cut the cookies and baked them the first day, then assembled them with the jam, wrapped them and delivered them the second day.

After delivering Don and Joyce's cookies (and posing in front of their yard decorations), Sam convinced me to walk across the park to see our neighborhood Christmas tree.  It was chilly, but worth the walk over!

The cooking continued when we made gingerbread pancake mix for Sam's preschool teachers.  Ms. Carmen emailed us a photo of her pancakes the morning she made them, and she said they were delicious.

After all that baking, Mommy needed an easy activity the next day.  So we brought out the peppermint play-doh again.  Mommy made a snowman.  Sam made a monster!

The next day was an exciting one - a Christmas gift shopping trip to the Dollar Tree.  Brian and I gave Sam one dollar for each member of our family we would be exchanging gifts with so that he could buy each person a gift that would be just from him.  We had so much fun, I had him get everyone

two

things.  I'm a big spender like that!  It was fun to see him look around and pick things he thought people would like.

Before we left for the dollar store I explained what we were doing and who he would be buying for.  He told me the one thing he wanted to get Uncle Andrew was "stinky underpants".  I told him I didn't think there were underpants at the dollar store and to think of something else Andrew might like, like a flashlight or a picture frame.

Lo and behold, on the "beauty aisle" we found underpants, tighty-whities if you will, with a giant barcode smack dab on the,

ahem

, front.  They were just laying there, in a pile, in a bottom bin,

unwrapped

.  Sam was beside himself with joy.  

The perfect gift for Uncle Andrew.  This was shaping up to to be one classy Christmas.

Sam placed all his items on the belt, underwear included, and paid the cashier.  

Needless to say we considered this a very successful shopping trip.

We spent the next day with Granny Nell and Vic at their house in Duncanville, eating dinner and opening presents before they left for their holiday travels.  Evie had a great time playing with new toys and Grandpa Vic played lots of cards with Sam.    A great end to the third week of our Christmas countdown! 

Advent Week 2

Advent fun continued in spite of the ice storm - so glad I bought that gingerbread house ahead of time.  This was our third year to decorate a gingerbread house.  They're kind of a pain in the toosh, but Sam loves doing it every year and they do make a cool table centerpiece.  

Thanks to Brian for snapping some pics of me and the kids.  You did a good job.

Mommy was crafted-out the next day, so a couple rounds of Christmas Memory it was!  

I must say, Sam's pretty good.

Needing more indoor activities for this last and final day of being stuck inside, I designated this our day to make peppermint play-doh.  But having not been to the store in five days, I had not had the chance to pick up one important play-doh making ingredient - cream of tartar.  Our awesome neighbor Joyce came to the rescue

and

brought over three movies, some candy and some popcorn.  She knew just what we needed to get through the day.

Finally our day to venture outside arrived!  It was flu-mist day!  What a way to start getting back to normal.  Brian had been thoughful enough to get the ice off of my windshield after the storm stopped the second day, but neither one of us realized what five days of sitting in the cold would do to my roof and front hood.  We knew it was ice - at least three inches of it - but not how solid and compacted it would be.  It took me twenty minutes to chop it all off and brush it away, but after that it was smooth-sailing.

The roads were pretty good all the way to the doctor's office and on down to the Galleria Dallas, where we spent the rest of the afternoon, rewarding ourselves for surviving the ice storm and our flu shots.  That is one BIG tree they've got there.  This was the first time we'd visited the Galleria that the ice skating didn't look fun to me.  I'd seen enough ice at this point.  Sam thought the tree was so cool and Evie was just happy to be out of the house!

Sam's preschool put on a Christmas pagent again this year.  Sam was chosen to be one of the shepard boys and he did a fantastic job.  Brian and I had to hang out by the door in the back, so I was only able to get a shot of him on the screen, but as you can see he was pretty darn cute as he sang every word to every song.  

After an exciting couple of days we needed something low-key.  It was still cold outside which made it the perfect day for a story.  I had worked on these felt board pieces for the past week while Brian and I watched tv at night.  I found the perfect nativity story online that was written as a rebus.  Sam and I were able to read the story together - I read the words and he filled in the words for the rebus pictures.  Perfect!

Gram and Pops had been promising Sam a sleepover for a long time and this ended up being the perfect weekend for it.  Brian and I wanted to go out for a belated anniversary dinner, so Gram and Pops watched Sam and Evie while we ate and then Sam got to stay the night and Brian and I took Evie home.  She and I had a girls' day the next day and it was very relaxing!

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!