Christmas Advent 2015!!

We are on year THREE of our activity advent calendar. What started as an excuse for me to get us out of the house and have stuff to do during the winter after Brayden was born, has become a very fun tradition of all types of activities to celebrate the advent. Each day has a different bible verse (that I obviously stole from Pinterest) so that we can attempt to keep focus on what Christmas is really all about:)  Here's what we've done so far!

1: Decorated our real tree and two fake kid trees, and started the chocolate advent countdown

2. Decorate the Window with Gel Clings (the things kids get excited about!)

And it wasn't an Advent activity, but we finished the rest of the house decorations too-the kids like to help Max with his Nutcrackers.

 3. Decorate the felt tree

4. Open new ornaments for the tree-Tucker got a Doc McStuffins one and Brayden got Dusty Crophopper-although they could really share since they both love both characters

 5- Have a playdate with a friend-did this but didn't get the pictures:)
6- Watch a Christmas Movie-We watched Charlie Brown Christmas, as usual!
7- Make a Christmas Craft. We made candy cane pipe cleaner ornaments and decorated foam Christmas trees with glitter glue and felt.  Surprisingly, they were really into it!

8-Make Christmas Cards. Tucker made one for his teacher which was so cute, but I didn't take a picture.
9-Open a Special gift-yay for $1.00 Christmas Tree Shop finds!

 10- Shop for a gift for a child in need. Again, no pictures, but the boys had fun picking out a foam football, some nerf guns, and a craft to donate to a collection that our church does every year.

11-Make a Gingerbread House-

12-Decorate Christmas cookies with friends-They loved decorating although I think they mostly loved pouring the sprinkles out onto the cookies....not sure if you can see the mounds on the older boys' cookies, but they were large:)

 --Not sure when this happened, but at some point, they got a nativity set that they could actually play with...although I Baby Jesus has been separated from his parents for quite some time now!

13- DD comes home!! Chris, Tucker and I went to pick up D from the airport! I got her a Tanzania flag so she felt a little more at "home". Tucker was having the most fun spinning in it while we waited.  He may have been even more excited to see her than me! Chris, Tucker, Max and Brayden hadn't seen her in person in a year!  That's a LOOOOONNNNGGG time! Tucker just kept saying, "DD is HOMEEEEE!" She's currently enjoying her rockstar status with our kids!

14-Go see the Christmas lights on Roseville. The pictures don't do it justice, but this family decks out their house. The hi light for the kids was definitely the train that went from the front to the backyard. They probably could have stayed and watched it all night...but there was this one time I forgot to change Brayden's poop diaper before we left to go see the lights....and nobody wanted to smell him anymore:)

15-Make Christmas treats for friends and family. The boys are actually very good helpers when it comes to cooking. I just have to unplug the mixer when I don't want it used. Last time we baked Brayden turned the mixer on (big stand mixer) right when Tucker was cracking an egg...let's just say there was major contact!

 16-Build a fort and have hot cocoa and marshmallows. Well this didn't happen because I ended up being home for 45 minutes and it was fort and hot cocoa or dinner, so I went with the latter.  At some point during the past few days though they did watch Frosty the Snowman and drink hot cocoa, so it was kinda a substitute.

17-Go to NYC and see the tree, etc.  Max, D, and I took Tucker into the city for the first time! We left Brayden so that we'd have more time to explore and not have to chase him around. We had a blast! The second Tucker walked on the train, he said, "This is AWESOME!" Then the conductor asked him if he wanted to beep the horn and he was in heaven!!  We saw the tree in Rockefeller center, checked out the NBC Store which was covered in Minions, Went to the M&M store, Toys R Us, ate lunch at Virgil's, and went to the Lego store. It was a very fun packed few hours:)

 18-Read a new Christmas book.  I didn't get a picture, but they got the Pete the Cat Saves Christmas book.
19- Make a Present/Cards for your teacher. We didn't do this one, but instead, (since Max and my plans got cancelled) we drove around town to look at the lights. A few moms compile a list every year of all the good houses and share it with the town which makes it really easy to check out the good places. We love the two houses by the lake that sync their lights to music that you can tune your radio too. The kids were baffled by it!

20-Go to Gram's holiday party/have fun with Nama and Papa. Max's Grandma has a holiday party each year that is fun to go to to see all of his cousins, etc.  We left Brayden with my parents (it was prime nap time and he's still getting over croup) and took Tucker to see everyone.

I can't believe it's only 5 more days until Christmas! (4 as I write this post!) I've been trying to really enjoy all of these festivities this year, knowing that many will be more difficult with a new baby to add to the mix next year.  I love the celebrations of this time of year, but while remembering that the whole reason we celebrate is because Jesus is born!