My sweet Mom started a tradition a few years ago of making an advent calendar for my kids. This isn't any "ordinary" advent calendar. She puts together a huge box full of a craft for each day of December, along with instructions and a song to play with each craft. It is one of my favorite parts of the season. I love seeing my kids get so excited for it to be their turn to find the day's craft in the box and read the instructions and find the song on You Tube. It is truly a time of peace and joy in our home -- time well spent together! This year my sisters and my grandmother helped assemble the advent activities. I am so grateful to all of them. So here are a few pictures of what we did toward the beginning of the month.
They even sent some toys for Nate -- so he had something to do while we crafted.
They also sent some beautiful Christmas outfits for the kids. They wore these to our Ward Christmas party, as well as to church every week of December (so far).
The Ward Christmas Party was a blast. Both Ben and Michael performed in the talent show. But I only took video (no pics) of the performances, which are too long to post on the blog. Michael played chimes with four of his friends. Ben sang a MTC version of the song Delilah (accompanied by a guitarist in the ward) - it was pretty great!
More crafting . . .
We made chocolate dipped pretzels to give as gifts this year. It actually worked out really well - if I do say so myself. The kids had a blast dipping.
And I had a blast decorating them.
We also decorated gingerbread (actually graham cracker) houses. I always find it interesting when we do something together with all of our kids and their personalities come out so strong in the results.
Michael was done FIRST.
Emma's was PERFECT. If you look on the right side of the house you can see a gingerbread boy roasting a marshmallow over a campfire.
And Sarah finished her's by dumping heaps of assorted candy onto the plate so she would have more to eat.
More crafts . . .
Nate loved this one because he could do it with the "big kids". He also ended up dumping out the water all over the table and sucking on his paint brush. But that is all part of the fun, right?
Tonight we went to Miracle of Christmas at the Zoo. It is a beautiful performance . . . with a wonderful spirit of hope and gratitude.
We have had a wonderful holiday season so far . . . Merry Christmas!
2 comments:
Loved it! I am so glad for all of your pictures I feel more like it is Christmas now!!!!
I loved the short video clip of doing crafts. They were too interested to even stop and smile. Shows what a success the crafts are! Our son sure married right! Wish you were here so we would be doing fun Christmas things, rather than old fuddy-duddy things. Love you and Merry Christmas
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