Day 22: Jingle Bell Napkin Rings

I don't have any pictures of these, but it was a cute idea (also from Best Christmas Crafts Ever!) and worked pretty well.

All we did was string small jingle bells onto sparkly pipe cleaners (both from the dollar store) and twist them into rings. Then we used them as napkin rings for our Christmas Eve dinner, when family was coming to visit. Easy, cute, and cheap!

Day 20: Coworker Christmas Party

Years ago, a company I used to work for would have a family Christmas party each year, organized by the employees at someone's house. I only made it to one, as they stopped having them after Amanda's first Christmas. But this year (almost 3 years since I left the company!) they decided to hold one again and invited several "alumni" to attend as well. It was great catching up with old friends and seeing how their kids have grown!

As always, "Santa" came to visit the party. Parents are responsible for bringing a wrapped present for each of their own kids, which are surreptitiously handed off for inclusion in Santa's sack. Each child gets a chance to sit on Santa's knee and receive their present.

Amanda seemed a little subdued after receiving her present from Santa. When I asked her why, she told me he wasn't really Santa - she could see his own beard underneath his Santa beard. We talked a bit about how Santa couldn't be everywhere and he was just helping out, but it was kind of a sad reminder of how fleeting her "little kid" days are.

I do like this picture of me and the kids with Santa:


I love Amanda's tender little head pat for Sam!

Day 18: Make a Santa Tissue Box

I got this idea from a craft book I took out from the library: Best Christmas Crafts Ever! by Kathy Ross. I'd actually like to get this book for our own library - lots of easy ideas, especially for kids slightly older than Amanda (early school-age).

This was fun and pretty easy. We did cut the facial circles a bit big, which made our Santa look like a muppet, but he was cute anyway!



(Amanda is making a crazy face in this photo...she has started making weird faces when we bring the camera out, so it's often hard to get a nice picture of her with a normal smile on her face!)

Day 14: Wear Santa Hats to Dinner

Simple activity, but I just like this photo:

That is all.

Day 13: Have Hot Chocolate with All the Trimmings

Usually we really do make fancy hot chocolate for this activity, but this year we were running short on time and decided to pick up treats from Starbucks instead. Yum!

Day 11: Make Christmas Cookies with Grandma

I had an appointment to go to, so my Mom took Amanda for the afternoon and they had a great time together doing lots of baking! They made gingerbread cookies, some no-cook chocolate balls, and a gingerbread house. The balls especially were very delicious!

I love this photo of their creations:

Day 8: Make Hand Wreaths

(Totally adorable Nativity Set by Little People - we also have the Little Drummer Boy and Little Shepherds sets.)

This is one of favourite crafts, and we've been doing it for the past three years. I'm proud to say I thought this one up on my own! Not that it's terribly original, and I've since seen it elsewhere, but the idea came off the top of my head. I love that this is quick, easy, very inexpensive, and uses supplies that even the craft-challenged such as myself are sure to have on hand. We also store the wreaths in the kids Christmas box* each year, so it's fun to compare how their hands grow from year to year.

All we do is trace hands onto red and green construction paper (this year I used a total of 10 hands for Amanda and 12 for Sam):


Sam was more interested in crumpling the paper than having his hand traced...I managed to get one tracing then used it as a template for the rest:


Then lay them out in a circle shape (it's important to do this before you start gluing to get the right shape), add a bit of glue, and - ta-da!


I also write their name and the year on the wreath with a Sharpie, but hadn't yet done this when the photo was taken. There you have it - lovely wreaths with which to decorate their bedroom doors!

* We have a big Christmas box that we use to store all the kids' Christmas stuff each year - Little People sets, decorations, books, hair elastics, etc. That way all those things seem new again when we pull out the box each year. Is this how other families do this? I've always been curious...

Day 7: Preschool Christmas Party

Yes, as you can see the plan was also to attend the Rogers Santa Claus Parade downtown. However, the night before, we realized that last year's parade didn't wrap up until almost 4 pm, and we needed to be back in Coquitlam for Amanda's preschool party by 4:30 pm. So reluctantly we decided to skip the parade this year. Hopefully we can make it next year, as we have enjoyed it in the past! It felt weird not to go this year.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon was the Christmas party for Amanda's preschool. In school they have been talking a lot about construction, so the teachers came up with the idea of having them "construct" gingerbread houses as a Christmas project. Although it would have been easy to just provide the kids with templates, each group was given the option to design the type of house they wanted to build, as well as any special design elements. The students visited a local high school and worked with Foods students to roll, cut, and bake the gingerbread pieces. Then at the party, they constructed and built the houses. Finally, on Monday morning they visited a local seniors centre to present the houses and enjoy a carol sing-along. I thought the whole thing was brilliant - the emphasis was not only on building the houses, but building relationships in the community.

Of course, our team of kids decided that an ordinary house was not for them - they wanted a chalet. (In the car on the way home from school the day they planned their houses, Amanda announced they'd decided on an "A-frame house". That kid knows more about houses than I do!). They also specified that it was to have an awning and paving stones. Hmm...OK. So we parents planned accordingly and waited to see what the kids would do with the decorations we provided.

The built house:


The crazily-decorated roof:


The completed house...check out the Pop-Tart and lollipop awning:


Sam was not terribly impressed:


Amanda posing:


We were totally impressed with the kids' decorating job (OK, the dads were mostly responsible for that awning). But the chalet-style house posed some huge challenges - the roof wasn't well-supported by the house walls, so it was a constant battle between armed-with-icing parents and the determined-to-slide-off roof. We thought we had won the battle, but the house had the last laugh, as it collapsed in the car on the way home. :( The kids were a bit sad, but not much so...after all, the fun was in the planning and building!

Day 6: Buy Our Christmas Tree

On Saturday we headed out to Art Knapps to pick up a Christmas tree! As I've said before, we are definitely a "real tree" family even though they can be a huge pain in the you-know-what. We used to buy our tree from a grocery store, but the past few years we've been spending a few extra bucks to buy them from Art Knapps and they have been very nice trees.

Checking out the trees:


Amanda posing with the winner!


Sam looking unimpressed, as always:


I have to say that this year's tree may be our best yet! I think it's definitely the tallest...in fact, there's a branch that touches the ceiling, but it's just a weird bare branch that we need to cut off. (Yesterday Amanda told me that we needed to cut "that freaky branch off the tree" so we could put the angel on). Unfortunately, after 3 days it is still sitting in our living room completely naked. Maybe we will just go for the natural look this year! Kidding...hopefully we can get it decorated in the next couple of days. The biggest stumbling block is the lights, which I need to do but have been completely unmotivated to get started on.

Day 5: Watch a Christmas Movie with Grandma & Grandpa

Jeff had his work Christmas party on Friday evening. Even though we weren't sure how Sam would do if we left him for the whole evening, we figured it was worth a try...it would sure be nice to get out occasionally, just the two of us! So we planned an activity for Amanda that she could do with Grandma & Grandpa when they came to babysit.

When we opened up the envelope in the morning, she chose to watch The Grinch. However, it was reported that they ended up watching a few others as well, including Charlie Brown Christmas. She had a great time watching with her grandparents, and being spoiled by them as well! They brought dinner over for her with all her favourites - mac & cheese, tomatoes, bread, strawberry milk, and ice cream for dessert - and generally treated her like a princess.

As for Sam...well, he took a bit of milk from the bottle with much coaxing. But it wasn't exactly a roaring success; he still spent much of the night crying. I guess we will keep trying...if he doesn't take a bottle eventually, we will probably just try a sippy cup after Christmas. Maybe Santa will bring one for him in his stocking...

Day 4: Shadbolt Centre to See Bobs & Lolo

Several weeks back, my Mom had told me about a Christmas event at the Shadbolt Centre at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby. I took a note and thought we might try to attend, but then I found out that one of Amanda's very favourite singing groups, Bobs & Lolo, were going to be performing! So of course we had to check it out.

I was quite impressed with the event - there were tons of activities and it seemed very well organized. It was pretty crowded though, and since it was just me and the kids (Jeff had choir practice to attend), it was a bit of a challenge maneuvering the stroller through all the people. It was especially fun once Sam woke up from his nap, took a look around at the totally unfamiliar place, and started screaming. Good times! I was able to take him out of the stroller and carry him on my hip with my carrier, and he was pretty good after that.

There was face painting:

No offense to anyone, but this was probably the saddest face paint Amanda has ever had. This was supposed to be a princess, in case you can't guess. I suppose that's what she gets for asking for something so complicated!

Amanda with the winter fairy:

She's looking just a hair short of terrified in this photo! :)

Bobs & Lolo performing:


Amanda wanted to draw a picture at the art station. The easels were set up with pastels, which she's never used before - they are sure messy! Here is the picture she drew of Bobs & Lolo (click through to see the photo on Flickr, with notes describing all the parts of the picture):

Day 3: Eat Breakfast for Dinner

You will have to take my word for this one because I can't figure out what I did with the envelope so there's no picture.

We've been doing breakfast for dinner as one of our activities since Year 1, and it's always a fun break in the middle of the week. Usually we cook waffles at home, but Jeff was in the mood for dinner out so we headed over to IHOP. For those of you who are interested in a run-down of our breakfast/dinner selections (i.e., none of you), here goes: Amanda had a create-a-face pancake, I had a chicken fajita omelette (with pumpkin pancakes on the side...a weird combo, but they're so yummy!), and Jeff had steak and eggs. We were all thoroughly stuffed.

Which again, you'll have to take my word for, because although we took our point-and-shoot camera to the restaurant with us, we realized once we got there that the batteries were dead. Argh!

Day 2: Record Answering Machine Message

And, here's where I admit...that we still haven't done this. We forgot in our planning that Jeff would be out at a meeting that night, and I really need him to help since he's the tech guy (and we will likely do the recording on his new Mac, which was with him at the time!). We keep meaning to get to it, but it hasn't happened yet.

Last year, Amanda sang Away in a Manger on the machine. It was really long, and a few people seemed annoyed by it, but we also got tons of really great messages about it. In fact, one guy called and left a message saying that he'd called our house by mistake (wrong number), but that he had to redial to listen again because the message was so cute! I managed to find the audio file of last year's message but can't figure out how to post it! Better yet, I will try to post this year's once we finally get it done.

Off to hang my head in shame...

Day 1: Make Paper Snowflakes

I wanted to stick with something easy for Day 1, so we made paper snowflakes. This was my first time trying this with Amanda, and it was probably a bit too hard...maybe it would be better in another year or two. I hadn't thought ahead to realize that she wouldn't be able to cut through the folded paper safely, so I ended up doing all the cutting. She drew patterns on each snowflake for me to cut, but she had a bit of trouble keeping them on the fold, so I had to improvise a lot.

A finished snowflake:


(And yes, Jeff was sleeping on the couch behind her. He is sick, so he was allowed.)

The December Crazies

I have been very neglectful of this blog lately...it seems that December has gotten away from me somehow! I'm going to try to get some posts up tonight and maybe tomorrow as well with details of our "24 Days of Christmas" activities.

I must admit that somehow I'm not really feeling the Christmas spirit yet, despite being more organized for Christmas than ever before. For the first time ever, I was pretty much done shopping for the kids before the end of November (just a few more small things to pick up). We have really scaled back our gift-giving to others this Christmas since it seems like over the past several years it's gotten more and more crazy each year. Awhile back when I was talking to Amanda about Christmas, she asked right off the bat "I wonder what gifts I'll get this year?", which was a sure sign that it's time to cut back! It doesn't matter how much we talk about how Christmas is really about Jesus' birthday and spending time with our family and friends, unless we put less emphasis on the presents she's never going to get it. Not to mention that it gets more stressful each year coming up with gift ideas, not to mention the money to pay for them! I'm looking forward to having a simpler holiday this year.

All that being said, we are way behind on getting the house ready for Christmas. Despite the fact that the kitchen is in total disarray, the weather has been terrible the last few weekends so we haven't got any outside decorations up. We are slowly getting the inside decorations out, but it's hard to get much done during the day with a baby who doesn't want to be put down! Hopefully by the end of this week we'll be feeling more ready for the holidays to come.

Misc Stuff...

Once again we are doing our "24 days of Christmas" tradition, but I have to get organized and write some blog posts about it (maybe tomorrow??). In the meantime, you can check out what we did two years ago here.

In other news, I've been searching for a way to add a list of my read and currently-being-read books to this blog for awhile. I've been updating my list through Facebook, but decided to switch to GoodReads because it gives me the ability to add a widget to the blog. You can find it on the sidebar at the right, a few items down.

Snow!

As predicted, a snowstorm hit Vancouver last night and we woke up to a couple of centimetres of snow on the ground. Of course Amanda was extremely excited...on the monitor the first thing I heard out of her was "Huh? What's going on?" and then thump thump thump thump down the hall, followed by her jumping into bed with us and saying "Did you see the snow?!". Um, yes, pretty excited.

After breakfast we got bundled up and headed out for a walk in the neighbourhood. It was really quite beautiful (I may not still be saying that tomorrow morning when I will have to drive in the stuff). It was slow going as Amanda stopped every 3 steps to pick up snow and bunch it up in her mittens. Then she figured out she could throw "snowballs" (really just handfuls of snow) at her Dad...I managed to stay safe since I was carrying the camera and that couldn't possibly get wet!! She was having a great time "sneaking up" on Daddy...i.e., telling him to come back (yeah, that's really stealthy Amanda), then stomping up behind him in her boots, giggling, before throwing a handful of snow at his rear end. Quite funny to watch...especially for me, since I wasn't on the receiving end! :)

Whole Flickr set here; a few pics:




By the way, we are once again doing the 24 days of Christmas in our household. I managed to actually get organized in time and we started today! Amanda was quite excited to see the trusty mailbox out this morning. Will post pics soon.

Day 24: Take Mom for Birthday Lunch

Yes, my birthday is on Christmas eve. Again, knowing it was going to be a busy day (especially since Christmas eve fell on a Sunday this year - the worst possibility for a church musician!) we planned something easy. We went to White Spot for lunch amidst all the other errands we had to accomplish that day. No pics, sorry. But it was really good!

Day 23: Eat Dessert for Breakfast

We wanted something silly for the last weekend before Christmas, because we knew we'd be busy! However, I didn't go completely nuts...we had frozen yogurt. Almost like ice cream, right?

Day 22: Christmas Concert at Church

December 22nd was the day of our annual Christmas sing-along concert at the church. This concert has been held for many years - at least since Jeff first started directing there - and has run the gamut from simple sing-along to full multi-choir performances. This year's concert definitely fell into the first category...very simple, no choir performances, just sing-alongs for everyone to participate in. Everyone seemed to have a great time.

Partway through, Jeff called all the kids up to the front to sing Rudolph and Jingle Bells (which happen to be Amanda's two favourite Christmas songs). She was by far the youngest kid up there, but it was her idea to participate and she did great! It was so funny to see the long line of "big kids" with Amanda at the end:


She even managed to snag a prize from Dad!


(Click any photo to see more).