Since I suppose I'm not happy unless I'm insanely busy, I made a December advent and the kids have been having a blast. Like last year, it's a string of stockings and in each stocking are two candies (one per kid), and ornament for our ceramic gingerbread house, and an activity. (Ideally, every day we also open our M&M advent, rip a link off Wesley's chain he made at school, AND read a Christmas story and scripture in our storybook -- we have a lot of advents.)
The activities have been fun. So far, we've:
1. Been to WildLights at the Woodland Park Zoo:
LOTS of lights. Very fun. They decked the Zoomazium out as a "Snowmazium" with these pom-pom snowballs, and the kids had a BLAST throwing them all over, at me, at each other, etc. I also had fun throwing them at them :-) I hit Laurel in the face once (oops!) and got Wesley a bunch of times. They LAUGHED and it was wonderful. I got tired even. It was such a fun night with my kids.
2. Ate all red and green food one day:
That's a quesadilla with a spinach wrap, plus salsa and sour cream, and pomegranate arils for lunch. Breakfast was green eggs and ham plus raspberries. Dinner was a pasta with red sauce and peas :-) Wesley wanted some yogurt and I dyed it green.
3. Had a gingerbread house making party with some friends:
My friends all bought kits but I'm insane and made our house myself. Awhile ago I bought gingerbread house "cookie cutters" off eBay and I've been dying to use them. I bought molasses, I followed the directions to a T, and I assembled the bare-bones house the night before. Using royal icing but then, realistically, Super Glue. I had to do some crazy engineering to get it to stand. The cookies spread while in the oven and the edges aren't straight, so the roof is too angled and too heavy. I suppose I've learned some lessons for next year, we'll see.
It was AWESOME to use all the crappy Halloween candy we have around the house. I LOVE that it didn't "go to waste." I'll be happy to throw this thing away in a few weeks with all of it put to good use.
4. Got out the nativity and read the nativity story:
So precious. Thanks Grandma Twining for the nativity. Every year my kids love it. Jesus is currently stuck under the couch so I need to work on that.
5. Bought and decorated the tree:
This is the first year of our 10 years of marriage that we've had a real tree. Someone gave us a fake one our first year, and we've used it every year. Last year Shane was having some allergy issues and we chucked the tree after Christmas since he thought maybe the tree was the culprit. Having a real tree is SO COOL. I really love it. It's just beautiful. It was crazy expensive and I don't know if we'll do it again, but it's gorgeous and I'm glad we did it for this year at least. I water it and vacuum up needles every day :-) It's a "noble" which some people tell me is the best!
We've also visited Santa at the mall, gone to the local Tree Lighting (disastrous -- I won't go into it), and watched the Christmas Devotional (while playing Christmas BINGO with marshmallows and M&Ms).
Coming up... celebrate someone's birthday tomorrow :-), make a fort in the living room and read Christmas stories underneath, watch a Christmas movie and eat popcorn, listen to Christmas music and play with instruments, go to a nativity festival, go to the ward Christmas party, etc. I'm trying to get a lot of the busy ones done before Monday when, dum-dum, I have surgery on my arm. LAME but necessary and I'm sort of looking forward to it.
Anyway, after tomorrow it's full-speed ahead for Christmas. After tomorrow. Tomorrow is all about my birthday girl.
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