The rest of the Advent Activities!

Here's the rest of our Christmas Advent fun!

December 13: Go look at Christmas lights on the houses around town! There were a couple with music synchronized with the lights! Tucker loved it and even though Brayden couldn't say, he was very excited too:)

December 14: We were supposed to go to the Holiday party at Max's Grandma's today, but the kids were sick and it snowed a lot so we didn't go and ended up staying in and watching a movie together.

December 15: Make Christmas Cookies. Tucker was a great helper (sort of...didn't really want his sick hands touching the cookies!) We also played in the snow from the day before. Brayden got a bad cut when the sled fell over. He rallied thankfully!

Poor little guy:(

And we built this clearly amazing snowman!

December 16: Build a fort and have lunch/snack in it.

December 17: Make a fun Christmas craft. We made reindeer ornaments for friends and family for Christmas presents.

December 18: Get a Christmas Coloring book. And this is totally unrelated to our advent activities, but Tucker brought this cute ornament home today from school. They had decorated the "wrapping paper" and wrapped it and he was SO excited and proud to give it to us. The ornament and picture are so cute but seeing how excited he was to give it to us was priceless. He went right up and hung it on the tree. It was a blessing B was really sick and I had to come home, so I could see him as soon as he got home from school for this!

December 19: Make a Gingerbread House. It was so much better this year! I bought the pre-made house. Tucker was so into it and wanted to put all of the candy on. He was really good about putting it right where I put the frosting.

(PS if anyone knows how to fix my iPhoto from doing this to my pictures, I'd really appreciate it!)

Not a gingerbread house, but we did go for a quick walk to try and get some fresh air for these sick

boys!

December 20: Go see the lights at Wonderland at Roseville. This is a cool house in Fairfield that gets ridiculously decked out for Christmas. There was a train that went from the front to the back-the boys were loving it!

December 21: Danielle surprised much of our family (Max and I and my parents were the only ones who knew) by coming home for Christmas! She thought we were going to be at my parents when they got home from the airport, but we saw her surprise with our own surprise and Tucker and I went to the airport to pick her up with my parents.  She was so excited! And so was Tucker-he was in shock and it took him a little bit of time to register it all:)

He was all dressed and ready to go-he had no clue where we were going and he didn't seem to care. I think he thought the car ride with Nama and Papa was the special surprise:)

Max and Brayden showed up the same time my brother did so they got to see how shocked he was...he even dropped his full coffee mug!

Our family celebrated that night by going to Chili's:) Totally unrelated!

December 22: Deliver cookies to neighbors. Tucker had fun giving these gifts to the neighbors, and then he was really pumped because some of the neighbors had gifts for him too!

My phone/I am taking terrible pictures lately! They're blurry but you can see the joy the kids got from giving each other their gifts.

And then we got to go to the Gombos's for dinner! The boys had fun as always:)

December 23: We were supposed to go to the city with most of the family, but it ended up pouring so we went to breakfast and went bowling instead. It was very funny to watch Tucker try to bowl for the first time-his first try, he rolled the ball before I could help him and the ball got stuck half way down the lane, then it rolled back!

I don't know what it is, but something draws kids to the prize machines. Of course I couldn't win anything at the 50cent machine, and being that it was supposed to be a special day (and we didn't actually get to go to the toy stores in NYC) Tucker got a prize in the $3 guaranteed prize machine.

December 24: Read the story of Jesus' birth (and have a couple Christmas celebrations)

December 25: Sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and celebrate his birthday!

(Pictures from our 3 days of Christmas will have to be in their own past:)

I'm so glad we managed to do all of these activities again this year.  We definitely didn't do well with finishing the Jesus Storybook Bible, but there's always next year!

Go Big or Go Home!

Well when we get sick, we really get sick.  Our boys don't get sick often, thankfully, but when they do, it's always bad.  Let this week be no different!
Last week Tucker came down with a mild fever and bad cough/cold. A couple days later Brayden got the same thing.  They are both pretty happy when they're sick so we usually just power through.  I figured they were fighting some virus or something.
Yesterday I got a call from the babysitter at work that "Brayden had been coughing the whole time they drove to drop of T at school and he has labored breathing." I'm not one to freak about about sicknesses (hence not bringing either kid to the doctor yet) but that freaked me out. Luckily we got an appointment and lo and behold-Croup and an ear infection! Poor kid. They gave me a steroid to give him so I was hoping that would work, but then last night around 11:15 he had a coughing and gagging fit so we had to do the whole steamy shower/bathroom and then outside in the cold thing. He was fine with it, but while we were outside I saw a random car drive down the road, and then back about a minute later. We live on a really quiet street, no one comes on it unless they live here or are going to someone's house-and it was 11:45pm! Max has been away for the week (home tonight!!!) so I freaked out that someone was going to rob our house-slept with a knife next to the bed!  Then Tucker was up, etc. it was a rough night.

I had made an appointment for Tucker today just in case, but I really didn't think there was anything wrong with him. Well, He has a double ear infection and is wheezing and needs antibiotics and nebulizer treatments. Dr. also said that Brayden was worse than they originally thought so he needs neb treatments too!  Boys were pretty good while we waited around for the medicine at the grocery store, but then we got home and I tried to do the nebulizer...the stupid thing isn't working! Ugh!! After a lot of praying, the thing started working! Both kids are asleep (Brayden practically fell asleep in his highchair at lunch after crying for 40 minutes while he battled me the entire time to take the neb) and I'm hoping it stays that way for awhile!

Pictures

 After getting so fed up with the crappy quality of most of my iPhone pictures, I had to get the real camera out. Still not perfect, but it's a major step up:)

trying snow

spinning

brothers

faces

i just love these two so much!

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:)