We are doing our Advent Calendar again this year. Last year I
made one, but we had a hard time with the boxes falling off. My mom and I found this new one at Michaels after Christmas last year. It is working very nicely. I kept the same paper idea circles as last year and we keep some Christmas candy in a little treasure box above the nutcrackers instead of actually in the advent calendar.
The Santa in the picture in the Advent Calendar is Dave's Great Great Uncle (I may be wrong, but he's in that vicinity). His name is Charles Howard and he was the first Santa in the Macy's Day Parade.
So far we have unwrapped one book, wrote letters to Santa and
decorated the kids' bedroom trees.
The one with the purple star is Madison's and the one with the red star is Gabe's.
We have decorated our big tree and the rest of the house.
Gabe has notified his Nana that he wants in on the Christmas Nutcracker tradition and has requested one that plays music. Good luck with that one, Nana!
We made a gingerbread village this year. We thought it would be easier to make smaller houses and then each one of us would decorate one. The kit came with five houses. As we were putting the houses together we remembered from last year how hard it was to keep the houses together. We ended up only making three of the five.
Madison decorated the candy shop,
Gabe and Dave decorated the Chalet,
and I decorated the toy shop.
The point of our Advent Calendar is to spend time as a family everyday while counting down the days until Christmas. We have really enjoyed the time we have spent together so far and look forward to the other activities we have planned later in the month.
Gabe danced with Leo for a while.
They ate corn dogs, Cheetos and cookies for dinner. Gabe actually ate a corn dog.
Gabe slow danced with Darby for a while. They had lots of parents taking their picture. There were probably 3 "couples" dancing in the entire gym and 2 of the "couples" were Gabe and Darby and Madison and Isaiah.
They came home and got undressed to get their pajamas on and I had to make them get their clothes back on to get this picture.
