Advent Fun

Last year, in an effort to make myself get out of the house in the cold winter with a 1 month old, I adapted an idea I stole from Pinterest or somewhere about doing a different activity each day of December until Christmas. I came up with our activities and then found a Bible verse advent to tie it to that we read every day. This year I found one that linked the Jesus Storybook Bible to each day, which Tucker has loved doing each night on the iPad:)  Some things are the same as last year and some are different, but we're having fun with it again!

December 1- Decorate the house with lights and other decorations

 December 2-decorate the kid's felt tree (somehow I don't have a picture of this this year yet!)

December 3-Open a Special Gift-boys got a book about the movie "Cars"

December 4-Read a Christmas book. 

One of these nights we also went for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner to see all of the lights that were up so far.  Tucker has been really into the "Dis-mis-lights" this year.

 December 5-Buy a gift for a child in need. I was able to adopt a child from Bridgeport to buy gifts for through one of the schools I'm at this year. It was a challenge to explain to Tucker what we were doing, but he finally got that some kids don't have toys, so we are going to get some toys for them, and no toys for Tucker of Brayden:)

 December 6- We ended up going to the Toby Mac concert this night! It was not the plan all along, but Tucker had a blast and so did I! We had great seats-perfect for him to be able to move around, since we really only had my seat anyway! Whenever you ask him if he had fun, he always says "Yes, Toby Mac was loud too."

December 7- Christmas Tree tailgate with friends and get our tree. If you saw my previous post, we decided to get our tree the weekend earlier, long story. This is the 5th year (I think) that we've been doing a tailgate to cut down our trees with a bunch of friends. It's certainly grown and changed from the original four of us that went, but the kids and cold weather this year made it just as fun...and the food was great and so many friends came to celebrate:) Since we had already had our real tree up, we set up the fake one in the basement for Tucker & Brayden to start putting their homemade/kid ornaments on.

December 8-Again we tanked our original plan, but ended up making Jiffy Pop (not to be repeated) and watching the Bubble Guppies movie! Yes!

 December 9- make Christmas Cards to friends (we sorta did) and go to Nana and Poppy's for lunch:) Times with my Grandparents are more and more treasured the older they get. They have always been such an involved and integral part of my life, and it is SO fun to have Tucker be able to be blessed by them too. My grandma made us French Toast, which of course the kids loved, and the had a blast checking out all of the ornaments on the big Christmas tree. It's fun to hear my Grandma tell the story of all the cool ornaments to the boys now. My Grandfather has already started soliciting Tucker for the Naval Academy (he lost that battle with the older set of Grandkids so he's trying the younger set and the great-grandchildren now!), but it was really so cute to see Tucker sitting with him as he told him about the ship that he was on during his time in the Navy. I pray Tucker and Brayden get many more years of stories from my Grandparents.

December 10- Open a new ornament and put it on the tree

December 11-Watch a Christmas movie. We watched Charlie Brown's Christmas. We've watched the Great Pumpkin and the Thanksgiving special this year too, so Tucker currently gets really excited about all things Charlie Brown when he sees them.

 December 12-This was supposed to be a visit Dad at work day but that didn't work out, so we made an impromptu stop at the library. This was big for us-we never go, but I think we'll start taking advantage of the free play space this winter!

We're about halfway through the month already! I can't wait for the rest of the month as we celebrate Jesus' Birthday! Christmas is so fun every year, but now with kids that can appreciate many things with the season, I feel like all of our old traditions are new again and we're having fun making new ones with the boys too!  I love Christmas:)