Such A Winters' Day: Christmas Advent-ures

Mid-way through December I started writing this post. The first line read as follows:

I love the business of the Christmas season; I think it's a good fit for my extrovert, social-event loving, structure-seeking self.

Then I looked at the calendar, realized I had a million things to do, got slightly overwhelmed, and here I am a month later finally getting back to finishing the post. Figures.

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As part of our celebration, we planned a different activity for each December day leading up to Christmas. The kids loved waking up each morning to discover what fun thing was planned for the day. Don't get me wrong, I needed the occasional "stay-home-and-don't-go-anywhere" days and made sure to schedule those as well.

As a reference for future years, here are the things we planned (we didn't have a full 24 because of our trip to Utah): Watch "Polar Express" (with Popcorn and hot chocolate), Decorate the Christmas Tree, Attend the Stake Creche Display, Watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, Salt Dough Nativity (which kept getting postponed due to illness, until finally it got put off until next year), Make Christmas countdown chains, Go to the City's annual Christmas celebration, Make bean soup in a jar gifts (with homeschool co-op), Journey to Bethlehem, Ward Christmas Party, Aubree's Violin Recital, Ice Skating (Mark took just Aubree and Bryce), Missionaries to Dinner, Graham cracker houses, Watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," Minivan Express, Christmas scratch craft (from the Oriental catalog), Dinner with friends/decorate sugar cookies, and Act out the nativity play.

We managed to get pictures of some of these fun activities.

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Helping decorate the Christmas Tree

Our Stake's annual Creche display was once again one of the highlights of the Christmas season. I really love looking at all the nativity sets from around the world, though it's not always easy to focus with four overly excited kids (okay, I'll admit it... just three, Graham was asleep).

I loved this set... it's an idea I'll have to keep in mind for the kids to try in the future.

Aubree grabbed a scavenger hunt card and was eagerly looking for the special kinds of sets listed. Bryce looked intently long enough to find a "favorite" set, then decided to play his own game which involved only walking on the lines painted on the cultural hall floor.

Bryce's favorite - a Lego nativity

Thane stayed safely in Mark's arms and just wanted to get to the hands-on activities and cookies (and there were plenty of both).

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We also made it back to the 7th Day Adventist's "Journey to Bethlehem" event, which is a live, 45-minute, uh, journey to Bethlehem. Aubree was giddy with excitement. This year we invited friends from our ward and made it a big group event.

While it was wonderful to have friends, I think it made me enjoy the event less because I was worried about how they were liking everything. It was almost exactly the same as last year, but it bothered Bryce a lot more this year. "Why are they [the Roman Soldiers] being so mean? Why did they push that man down?" It didn't help that another little girl in our group (Thane's age) sobbed anytime anyone raised their voice, and that happened a lot.

Overall, though, it was still amazing and any reservations my kids had were forgotten once they got their apple cider and cookie at the end.

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Our new city puts on an annual Christmas celebration. We heard good things about it, so we decided to check it out. The highlight of that night was the kids and Mark getting to ride around the park, looking at all the elaborate Christmas lights, in a train. I'm pretty sure my boys will require us to go back every year.

Don't let the sober looks on their faces fool you, they loved it!

Oh, and they had cookies and crafts too. Do they know my kids will do just about anything for a cookie?

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Our new (now old) ward's Christmas party was also a lot of fun. It was a typical, big dinner with plenty of food and desserts (which makes it an automatic, Mormon success, right?), but they also had musical performances and a sing-a-long. Aubree liked the sing-a-long best, but the long string of performances before that was too much sitting-still-being-quiet for Bryce and Thane.

Soon enough, however, they were able to move on to (you guessed it!), cookies and crafts.

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Continuing on the cookie theme... we got together with some good friends from our old, old ward and had dinner and decorated sugar cookies. They have two girls Aubree's age and a boy Bryce's age. The three girls took their decorating uber seriously. They used different colored frostings, accent colors, and carefully placed sprinkles. They worked diligently.

Bryce was equally diligent, but the boys generally felt that a well-decorated cookie involved 2-parts frosting, 1-part cookie. Thane was happy to help consume the finished products.

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And since my kids were clearly treat-deprived, we spent a fun evening with my Aunt Deanna and Uncle Ray decorating graham cracker houses. Since learning the use-melted-white-chocolate-to-hold-the-structure-together trick last year, our decorating has been much more enjoyable (because the houses aren't constantly falling apart). Aubree's now old enough to decorate completely independently, and took great delight in the tiny details.

Aunt Deanna helped Bryce, but he needed very little assistance.

By next year he'll be ready to do it alone.

Mark helped Thane, who cleverly only put candy he wanted to eat later on his house. In the following days, as the kids ate their creations, they acknowledged Thane's wisdom and pledged they'd do the same next time.

Uncle Ray went back to his engineering roots and spent most of his time building his house. Once it was sturdily assembled, he decided it didn't need much decorating.

Graham continued his streak of best-baby-we've-ever-had, and slept through the commotion.

And as we got ready to say good-bye to Deanna and Ray and thank them for joining us for the chaos (they were so much fun!), we turned to find Thane drinking the chocolate chips.