Monthly Archives: December 2013

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Snow and Crafty Fun!

More December pictures to share with you all–can you believe it, new blog posts three days in a row! The kids are enjoying doing Christmas-y crafts this year. Last weekend our Advent calendar activity one day was to make cinnamon dough Christmas ornaments. The kids dumped in the ingredients, I mixed the dough, and Max rolled it out for us. They had fun choosing which cookie cutters to use and the house smelled amazing afterward.

Another Advent calendar activity was to walk around our neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. We all bundled up and Max held the flashlight to light our way. We enjoyed our neighbors’ festive decorations and lights!
Max has been asking since last winter when it will snow. Living in the Pacific Northwest, we get some winters with hardly any snow at all, and others where we’re housebound for several days after a big storm. Everything aligned on Friday and we got a few inches of snow! Max was thrilled and we went out to play in it first thing after breakfast. The kids threw snowballs, made a little snowman, and made a bunch of snow angels. Such fun!
Merry Christmas, family and friends!
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December Fun, Part 2

The next installment of our December adventures! Let’s start with the Christmas tree. We continued our tradition of cutting down our tree on a farm. However, we had to alter it a bit–when we arrived at the farm we’ve been to the past few years, we were greeted by a sign that said, “Closed–Sold out!” This was a surprise as it was the first weekend in December, so we were not feeling like we were late to the game. Thankfully technology came to the rescue–I put out a PSA to my local moms’ group, and a friend recommended another farm nearby. A quick search on my phone for the address, and Siri kindly directed us there. This farm still had trees, and we chose a nice tall one. In fact, the tallest tree we’ve ever had; Jeff had to trim a bit off the top once we got it home so that we could fit our star topper on. The weather was sunny but unusually cold for Seattle (12 degrees!), so we kept the excursion on the shorter side. The kids love having the tree up and they really enjoyed decorating it this year. 

Our friend Angel found a parent-child fused glass ornament making class at a local art gallery. So Angel and Emmeline and Max and I did it together, and made really cool snowman ornaments. Max had fun picking out the decorations for his ornament and arranging it just so. 
And finally, a picture of the kids enjoying one of the Advent calendar activities: “Eat a treat”
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December

I’ve been delinquent in my blogging this month. We’ve been having great fun enjoying the season, Jeff’s family is here now and my dad and Helen came earlier this month. The kids are so excited for Christmas this year, especially Max. It’s so fun to share traditions with them and make new ones as a family. This year we have two Advent calendars–one that I put a new activity in each day, and one that is a giant felt Christmas tree with felt ornaments to snap on each morning. Max wants to do those right away when they get up and always remembers whose turn it is to do which calendar. 


Here is the first installment of December pictures!

We visited my Grandma:
Fun times with Grandpa and Grandma Helen!
New Christmas jammies!
Then they wore those new jammies to see Santa. We had a very successful visit this year. We were pretty sure Max would do well, since he was excited to tell Santa what he wants. Anna was a wild card though, she sticks pretty close to me when new people are around, so handing her to a stranger in a weird outfit was an iffy proposition. But she held Max’s hand and walked up to him no problem. Max chatted with Santa for a few minutes and then we asked Anna to tell him what she wanted. She said “Max,” meaning she wanted Max to tell Santa for her. We had prepped him for this possibility so he had no problem telling Santa that Anna wants a purple superhero cape, and he wants “The teddy bear I saw in Starbucks.” Then Anna agreed to sit on Santa’s lap for a picture and we ended up with a great one!