Advent

I don't want to sound like a Scrooge or a Grinch, but something about Christmas just rubs me the wrong way, which wasn't helped when I read several Wikipedia articles about Santa Clause and the original St. Nicholas and found out that our version of Christmas really came about in the 1950's and that gift-giving has nothing to do with the Wise Men giving the Christ child presents and more to do with Norwegian pagan gods mixed with the Catholic St. Nicholas mixed with Macy's and Coke wanting us to spend more money.  Don't get me wrong, I like getting gifts and if I find a good gift that I know you'll love, I like giving gifts too.  But I don't like getting so wrapped up in the giving and receiving and purchasing and wrapping and searching for and pondering upon what to get people that the Christ disappears from Christmas.  

What I do LOVE about Christmas is advent and Christmas cards.  I love Christmas cards so much that I have endlessly harassed by poor in-laws about them getting my Christmas cards, which may have accidently gotten delivered to the Big House and then forwarded to them.  They didn't get any of my cards.  My name is Heather and I have a problem.  BUT this post is not about my love of Christmas cards.  It's about my LOVE of advent.  

We started this four years ago when we had our first Christmas of just us and I was afraid of being bored/sad that I wouldn't be spending the holidays with my family.  And it's become the highlight of the Christmas season for me--an activity every single day with my little family.  If you had my children and husband as your children and husband, you would know how wonderful and amazing it is to spend time with them.

Day 1: We always put up the tree and Christmas decorations.  Later we cut out snowflakes and made a winter wonderland around the tree.

Another day we carved snowmen out of soap and put an entire can of shaving cream in the bath for a snow bath.

Greg's--he still wanted to be able to use his as soap so kept the carving to a minimun.  I had failed to count how much soap we had, so we were carving our last 4 bars, and if you know me, you know how much I hate shopping, even for essentials like soap so...Greg is a wise man.

Mine/Rex's.  Rex accidentally carved his in half so I gave him mine to finish.

Alice went with an abstract approach.

 The first week of December we go to the Speedway Lights (the race track where NASCAR races take place--it's the South remember?), which is my kids' favorite thing.  This year, we even got to drive on TWO of the embanked turns and I made the mistake of telling Greg that one of my friend's husbands drove to the top of the turn, so of course Greg had to too.  It's pretty steep.  As in, Rex and Alice were hanging from the windows trying not to fall out of the car (it was a warm night so we rolled down the windows and let them out of their car seats so they could see better).  It's not often that I nag Greg on his driving, but that one...he was about to roll my brand new van!

The kids wrote letters to Santa

Doesn't Alice look like she's actually writing something?  She draws scribbles in straight lines like she's writing.  What can I say?  She's advanced.

Alice couldn't decide whether or not to be terrified of the petting zoo.

We took Aunt Sahar with us to the Speedway Lights and were lucky enough to score some free tickets from a family leaving, so the kids took a train ride with Sahar.

 Other favorite activities include:
--Sub for Santa Shopping
--making hot chocolate from scratch
--watching a Christmas movie as a family
--buying a new Christmas book (this year we got Little Santa by Jon Agee--super cute, we love it)
--reading and acting out various parts of the Christmas story every Sunday (we start with Isaiah and Samuel the Laminite--I also make Greg sing carols with me while the kids roll around on the ground--he's a good sport)
--Getting pictures taken with the free Santa at Bass Pro
--Today we played bored games and watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas while Alice hid under her blanket because apparently the Grinch, who she's seen a million times in the book, is scary.

And today was Christmas Sunday so I tried to get a cute picture of the kids all dressed up for church, but...well, I tried.