Christmas activities

During the month of December I planned 24 activities as a count down to Christmas.  I knew that for me to stick with it some of the activities had to be really simple or I would just get overwhelmed and stop doing the whole thing.  Some days it was just open a a new Christmas book ( I got a whole bunch of new books for very inexpensive) but other days it was make and decorate sugar cookies. We had a lot of fun doing all of our activities.  And I didn't even come close to taking pictures of everything we did but her are some of the things.  

We went and visited Santa at the Bass Pro Shop, rode the carousel, made Christmas crafts and wrote letters to Santa .

Our kids are pretty scared of Santa.  Well I should say Leila is scared of Santa which then makes Greydon and Asher scared.  So I ended up being in the picture so that the kids would at least stand by him.

Here is the Christmas activity countdown that I made, it was a lot more work then I thought it would be and I barely finished halfway through the  month but now it is down for years to come and I'm happy with how it turned out

One day we got a little bit of snow and Greydon was so excited to get out and play in it.  Even though there wasn't much he still made snow angels and tried to throw snow at me.  

Every year I get he kids new ornaments for our tree.  It is really hard trying to find ornaments that are kid proof and don't cost a fortune. I spent way to much time this year gluing ornaments back together after my kids go a hold of them.  Greydon got a Spiderman, Leila got Hello Kitty, Asher got a Candy cane Santa and Paul and I got an Iowa ornament.  

We went to the Jolly Holiday Lights downtown.  On Monday nights it is half price so we had to take advantage of that.  I was surprised with how long the set up was, they had lots of lights and it was a fun drive for us, plus we had stopped and bought hot cocoa for the drive.  

We made sugar cookies and the kids were so excited!

Last week we got a huge blizzard.  It started snowing Wednesday evening but during the night the wind picked up and caused all sorts of damage.  School was canceled, our power was knocked out and we had giant snow drifts.  Paul took my car (including car seats) since it is better in the snow.  The roads were really bad and I didn't plan on going anywhere.  With our power being out we were freezing.  My friend Alisha called to check up on us and invited us over since they had power.  I declined since I didn't have car seats and really didn't want to drive in the snow.  My mom helped me figure out how to get our fireplace on but it was still so cold and the kids were stir crazy.  We played a bunch of games and tried to put Asher down for a nap but he was just too cold.  Alisha sent her husband to come pick us up.  It was nice for the kids to hang out with friends and for us to have a warm place to be.  We went home that afternoon and luckily the power was back on.   I got to work shoveling the driveway.  My neighbor saw me out shoveling with just tennis shoes on, I kept forgetting to buy snow boots.  I guess she felt really bad because she came over with a brand new pair of nice snow boots for me, she said she had an extra pair and I could just keep them.  She also said she felt really bad because normally she would just snow blow our driveway for us but their snow blower was broken.  I dug out our driveway as best I could before it got dark, well I at least cleared enough so that Paul could get into the driveway.  The snow drifts were crazy, we had spots where grass was poking through and then other spots where it was five feet deep.  We were always warned by our neighbors that it wasn't the amount of snow they get in Iowa but the snow drifts.  The next morning I heard a truck out front and looked out to see my neighbor with a bobcat clearing out our driveway so we could easily get in and out.  I've said this before but we seriously got so lucky with our neighbors.  The temperature dropped very quickly and we ended up with really really icy dangerous roads and the city was having a hard time clearing them.  I'm surprised Paul made it to and from work on Thursday and Friday.  They canceled school on Friday too because the roads were so bad.    

Poor Leila got a stomach bug and had to be picked up from school on Tuesday morning and was still sick on Wednesday. So between being sick and snow days Leila got an extended winter break.  Thank goodness only Asher got the stomach bug and the rest of us remained healthy.  

I spent a bunch of time sewing Christmas presents for the kids.  I made this apron for Leila and was excited that it actually turned out cute.

Every morning the kids loved to look for Ely the Elf.  Some days he was pretty creative and others days we were lucky if he even moved.  I can't tell you how many nights I had to crawl out of bed to hurry and move Ely because I had forgotten.  But the kids loved it and thought he was hilarious.  Some of their favorites were hanging from rope tied to the ceiling fan, when he dyed our milk pink, when he left a naughty and nice list and when he left candy kisses to be planted and then they grew into candy kiss candy canes.  

I took the boys to the mall to do some shopping when we noticed there was no one in line to see Santa.  I asked Greydon if he wanted to talk to him.  Grey seemed excited to so we gave it a try.  Greydon  walked right up to him and told him his name and what he wanted, then gave him a high five and sat by him for a picture.  And then at the end gave him a big hug.  Because this was so spur of the moment I wasn't prepared with a camera and then paid way to much for the mall picture.  I was just so happy to see Greydon actually talk with Santa and not be fearful