Advent & Christmas Season

It's been a super busy Christmas season in this house.  I posted a while back that we had made a countdown calendar with a different activity each day, we have been doing that nightly.  Although some nights due to hectic schedules, late dinners and unplanned meetings we did have to postpone a couple but we are doing well getting each activity done....eventually.  We have been decking our halls and making things cheery around here. 

We have also been lighting our "Advent Wreath" I put that in quotations because I found this really different wrought iron bowl candle holder and I think it has a bit of character, which fits right in at our house.   Each one of the kids reads a prayer before we eat dinner, I made it easy to get them to read the prayers aloud, whoever wants to light the candles has to read.




On December 6th, St. Nicholas delivered clementines, chocolate coins, and candy canes to the kids.  I really wish we had nice wooden clogs to put out, because somehow these shoes look toxic. 

Here are a couple of our other countdown activities, we read the Polar Express, made marshmallows, drank hot chocolate, then watched the movie.  We also read The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett and made reindeer brownies. 







We then decorated the Christmas Tree, read The Legend of the Christmas Tree.  This Advent/Christmas season has been very productive and we are looking forward to the rest of it.

Well I can tell the holidays are coming.  Every year I seem to get slapped in the face with extreme fatigue.  It usually happens right before I need energy to get something done (this week is our extended family's Christmas party).  Here's to hoping energy comes back, I did manage to complete a craft project today that I started a month ago..LOL

Going back to work is going well, or at least I think so. The extra income is helping alleviate some of the financial strain in the household. We are all of course trying to adjust to routines and keeping things somewhat calm, well as calm as things can be with 4 kids. We started preparing for the Christmas season, Holley and I worked on a Christmas Garland. We started with a string of 100 white lights and 3 rolls of tulle (25 yds. per roll). It was a lot of knot tying, but it was well worth the effort. Now it has been transformed from garland into our family countdown activity calendar. Inside each number(representing the days), there is an activity for us to do together. Anything from decorating a room, watching a movie, reading a story or to donating to Toys for Tots. It was a lot of fun using scrapbook paper to make the cute little tags with the embellishments. Here are a few pictures of the final project :)