Advent 2014

Advent is one of my favorite Christmas traditions.  Forcing myself and my kids and sometimes my husband when he isn't working to all spend non-screen time together.  Golden.

But this year didn't work out like I planned.  I've gotten better over the years at picking activities that actually fit into our schedule without feeling rushed.

But this year, I have three kids and school (curse you kindergartner!  It's surprisingly difficult--more on that later...if I get around to it) and I'm drowning.  So we did an activity every but I didn't take a ton of pictures and I didn't blog about it every day.  Instead I folded laundry and washed dishes and folded more laundry and unloaded the dish washer and looked for Henry and took whatever he'd stuck in his mouth out and most importantly counted down the days to when my mother would arrive and do the chores and I would sleep/do all the other chores.  And now she's gone and it's a week and a half after the end of advent and I'm just now posting about it. But you take what you can get.

As per Greg tradition/request, we put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving.  Or more correctly, 2/3 of the tree--Honey badger don't care.  Honey badger do what he wants.

We painted ceramic figuriens one night.  The older kids loved it.  Rex was very careful with his and made sure to stay in the lines.  Alice was careful as first, then got a little carried away.

 Henry crawled around on the floor.

We made hot chocolate from scratch one night, watched the LDS church's new Christmas video and posted our #sharethegift on Instagram.

This next one took 3 days.  Day 1 we made the candy ornaments.  Day two we baked the cookies--all day long.  I think I made 7 dozen cookies that day.  Day 3 we delivered treat boxes to our neighbors and I think they turned out really cute and I'm mastering cookie making so the cookies even tasted good.  Pinterest win!

 Then, after Grandma got here, we did our favorite thing: Speedway lights!  Worth it every year.  We

 Henry didn't like the goat nibbling his toes.

 One night Greg got out his HAM radio and called Santa.  The kids got to make special requests over the radio--so cool (and super nerdy at the same time).  Did I mention Alice asked for something different than she had asked for when we got pictures taken with Santa the previous day.  KIDS!  Luckily she didn't really care when Christmas rolled around.

 And then this year, for the first year in...well ever, I bought matchy matchy Christmas Sunday clothes.  Ok, not matchy matchy, but coordinating.  I think they look so adorable.

 Until I tried to get a picture of all three.  And Hank was done.

 So Grandpa came to the rescue and I think this picture turned out quite well.

 We also made snowflakes, studied the Christmas story in-depth (or as in-depth as a 5 and 3 year-old can handle), bought a new Christmas book, made service stars to pass around our house (the services usually ended up being Rex making room in his bed for me so I could sit by him while he feel asleep...not sure if that counts), and a few other things that I can't remember right now.