Advent

Hey! So it's been...6 months. What have I not told you? We bought a house. We moved to Dallas. Oh, and I got pregnant. Scheduled C Section on January 17th, so we're a mere 6 weeks away from becoming a family of four. Surprise! I could probably say more about this, but who cares? Let's talk about Christmas!

So I'm doing an advent calendar this year with Jack. I didn't bother with one last year because he was only 20-ish months old and I didn't think he'd get the concept. Honestly, I wasn't so sure he'd get the concept this year either, but I figured I should start NOW in order to set the tradition. It should be good practice for next year when he'll be 3.5 and hopefully really into Christmas.



And since this was just a practice one, I didn't go all out. I used yarn I already had. I bought Christmas cards from the dollar bin in Target and got some stickers and cheap markers. As you can tell from the photo above, there's also only 9 envelopes. This is because the blasted thing will not stay UP. Alex and I have had to hang that string up a bazillion times. It's beyond annoying. I think I've finally got it secured enough with 3 of those little sticky patch things on each side (Again, we already had these laying around the house. I was going to use push pins but, surprise! We can't find them.) I have since added bows to cover up the ugly patch stuff, but haven't tried adding any more envelopes. I also didn't want to string anything lower because I was afraid Jack would just rip it all down. Also? Let's be honest, he doesn't care. AT ALL.

Here's my list of activities. You'll notice that we have "Read a new Christmas book!" several times because I bought 5 of them from the Scholastic order form at his school and have been saving them. I tried to use those on school days when he'd already have a bunch of stuff going on. I also cheated and used his Christmas program and party for school as activities even though those were going to happen anyway.

1 Read a new Christmas book!
2 Color in a new Christmas coloring book
3 Read a new Christmas book!
4 Visit Santa
5 Make an ornament
6 Read a new Christmas book!
7 Shop for a gift for cousin Abby
8 Go to the Christmas program at school
9 Buy a toy and drop it off for Toys for Tots
10 Go to a Christmas concert
11 Go see the Christmas trains
12 Make a Christmas decoration
13 Read a new Christmas book!
14 Make a Christmas card
15 Go to the Christmas party at school
16 Watch a Christmas movie
17 Bake and decorate sugar cookies
18 Read the Christmas story from your Bible
19 Make a gingerbread house
20 Read a new Christmas book!
21 Make an ornament
22 Go on a car ride to look at Christmas lights
23 Drink hot chocolate and eat a candy cane
24 Open one gift tonight
25 Merry Christmas!!!

I'm probably going to change up the order on some of these, depending on how the day is going and if we need to mix stuff up. I have yet to procure a Christmas movie, so feel free to suggest something a 2.5 year old boy who can't even finish the movie Cars and hates Toy Story might enjoy.

So how has it gone so far? Okay. Day 1 was a total bust. He was tired and grumpy by the time we got to open the envelope and he refused to unwrap the book (this one). He wasn't interested in reading it AT ALL and flipped through it quickly. I'm hoping he'll be more interested in it as the month goes on. Day 2 (today) went a lot better. He has REALLY been into coloring lately, so I was hoping a new coloring book would be exciting. And it was! Thanks dollar bin at Target!