Fast Approaching

I cannot believe how fast Christmas is coming this year!  It seems to get worse each year.  I have enjoyed having our activity advent to focus on.  I haven't been able to post much due to illness in our home.  We were able to go to Temple Square which was great fun.  Unfortunately it was rainy the night we went which meant we had to speed it up a bit.  We were wet and cold towards the end, but enjoyed it nonetheless.  We also tried gingerbread houses for the first time.  Thank goodness for the kits from Costco!!  Made my night so much less stressful.  We bought a couple and tackled each one in teams.  It was certainly a night to remember.

                                                                                  


Another thing I am happy to cross off my list is the making and delivering of neighbor gifts.  I want my gifts to be useful but inexpensive as well.  Candy and cookies are great, but in my house we get SO many sometimes!  I am usually tormented for weeks trying to come up with something original (I am lacking in the creativity department) but this year my idea came to me before Thanksgiving!!  I am happy to say this was 100% my idea, no pinterest needed.  I do wish the tags were dressed up a bit.  We have had printer issues.  The caption says "We're "dishing" out the "joy" this holiday season.  I was able to get the joy pretty cheap from Amazon. I thought it would be nice to get some dish towels to go along with the dish soap. I think they turned out great!

Making Room

I really don't want to post about every activity we do for our advent, but some I think are worthy of one.  One of the things I included was our "making room" tradition.  We always have the kids go through some of their things and decide on a few to donate.  In the past I have focused more on  "If you want toys from Santa you gotta get rid of some first."  This time I tried to help them understand their toys and things would get good use from children less fortunate.  The thing that interests me is how different my children are from each other.  Every one of them was less than happy at the beginning.  I asked for 5 things each.  They could be books, clothes, or toys.  A few of my children grumbled for half a second and then went straight to it, in fact they didn't want to stop at 5! A few of my kids were okay with 5 and ONLY 5.  Then I had one that tried to negotiate with me, talking me down on the number of things.  And of course I had one that gave me 1 thing and promised to get more later, but still hasn't.  The other thing that gets me is their choice of things.  I have to bite my tongue when they choose the thing that I searched all over town for because they wanted it SO BAD last year!  Sometimes I just have to talk them out of it because it didn't get enough use to have made my trouble worth it.  It was a great experience I think, and now we have just a tad more room for heaps that will come at Christmas.

Keeping It Real

               I want to start out by saying I LOVE pinterest.  It is filled with great ideas and I want to try them all.  But I have to keep it real.  There is such a temptation to be "as cute" as or "as good" as what I see posted there.  The truth is, I simply don't have time to devote to making things cute.  I did see something I new I wanted to become a tradition in our home.  Everyday my oldest asks me, "can we do something fun today?"  With as many options as there are around the holidays I wanted to make an activity advent calendar so they could have something to look forward to, and help the time until Christmas pass a little more quickly (cause that is exactly what I need; time to pass more quickly).  I saw all types of amazing things on pinterest.  But again, as a mother of 6, I have to keep it real. So I did the best I could!  I went to put it together this morning and realized I didn't have enough clothespins and I forgot to put numbers on them.  Oh well..

                       Today's activity was to make countdown chains.  The kids asked me if they could do that the day after Thanksgiving so I thought it would be a great way to begin.  This morning I told them I had a surprise.  I expected them to jump up and down when they saw the envelopes, and then to be so excited they couldn't wait to do the chain. Instead they grumbled that the envelopes were the surprise.  Typical.. Its okay though. They got excited later,  then I realized I was out of Christmas colored construction paper.  Who needs Green and Red and White anyway?  Overall I think we are off to a good start.