Each year, starting the day after Thanksgiving, the kids and I open a Christmas book and do a Christmas activity each day. It's one of my favorite traditions and even though this last year was a little different (because of getting sick at the end), we had a lot of fun together and made a lot of new memories.
November 24: Holly Days
Holly Days is a local event that takes place the day after Thanksgiving and is a big deal in Vernal. The kids and I went and took their cousins along. It was freezing, but we had fun despite the cold!
November 25: Decorate Kids' Room
We set up the kids' room with Christmas lights (which I LOVED with the new paint job) and their little tree. Then we made paper ornaments to add to their tree.
Oliver loved Christmas and singing Jingle Bells!
November 26: Draw names for secret service
One year, I got the book "One Last Straw" from Deseret Book and after reading it, Ashtyn desperately wanted to draw names each week like they do in the book. During the week, you do secret acts of service for whoever you drew. Ashtyn is always in charge of having us draw names each week and we use felt cut up as straw so we don't have to stress about the kids playing with it.
November 27: Christmas shopping
I didn't have a picture, so here's one of the bread I made that day.
But Christmas shopping for us consists of going to Walmart and looking at all the Christmas stuff there while getting anything we need for decorating (like if lights need replaced or if we need more hanging things, etc).
November 28: Make countdown chains
I always like to make paper countdown chains with the kids, I think it's fun for them to have the physical representation is helpful to them in understanding how far away Christmas is. And I like to do it in the days leading up to December, and then we start taking chains off in December. This year, we also made the cute little snowmen to help remember who each chain belonged to.
November 29: Decorate for Christmas
Finally we decorated for Christmas! We held off and didn't put all the decorations up right after Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving came so early in the month and Ben didn't want to be Christmas-ed out before Christmas got here. I was really excited to decorate!
November 30: Decorate the tree
Decorating the tree with young kids is always a crazy experience, but it's also a fun one.
December 1: Polar Express Party
The first Friday of December, we do a Polar Express party for movie night. We invite cousins over in pajamas, give out tickets to the Polar Express, and have hot chocolate and other treats while we watch the movie.
December 2: Write letters to Santa
We love doing this classic activity together.
December 3: Gingerbread Houses
Prepping for the houses!
Each Sunday, we meet for a treat with Ben's family. I love doing the first treat of the month at our house and letting the kids decorate gingerbread houses. We use graham crackers (Ben cuts them all for me) and then we use my Great Grandma's icing recipe (it dries really fast and is literally hard as glue) to put them together. Then we give them to the kids with frosting and candy and just let them at it. The toddler boys needed help this year, but the older kids all were able to do it on their own and had a blast!
December 4: Make ornaments
When Ben and I were first married, we didn't have a lot of money to put toward Christmas, so we decided to make an ornament together instead of buying a new one. My mom also gave me the ornaments for her old tree that were homemade by my grandmas and great grandmas and we decided to make it a tradition to make an ornament as a family.
December 5: Christmas Around the World
This was my second attempt at starting a tradition around learning about what others around the world do at Christmas. I had the idea of setting up several different traditions from around the world and letting the kids experience them, but it ended up being too much for me. Instead, we read a book about the cookies kids from different countries left for Santa and made one of the recipes together. These cookies are made with corn starch instead of flour and were pretty yummy!
December 6: Gingerbread Cookies
This day, we made and decorated gingerbread cookies (my great grandma's recipe) and Uncle Jon got to be there to do it with us! Then we watched a short animated video of the Gingerbread Man on YouTube, so Oliver got my rolling pin to watch it.
December 7: Make cards for firemen, policemen, and firemen
This was a new tradition and so much fun! I loved seeing what the kids came up with for their cards. After we finished making the cards, we dropped them off with a bag of gingerbread cookies.
December 8: Grinch Day
This was another new tradition and it was a huge hit! Rylee especially loves the Grinch (she always has). For our Grinch Day, we read the book together, watched the cartoon and animated movie, made Rice Krispie Treats with Christmas M&M's (I had bought little red heart sprinkles to go on green heart Rice Krispie Treats, but they ended up not coming), colored Grinch coloring pages, did a science experiment with the theme of his heart growing three sizes, wrote notes of love and appreciation to each other, and then made "Grinch pancakes" for dinner.
December 9: Ninja Elves
This is one of my absolute favorite tradition. Instead of exchanging gifts, Ben's family uses that money to donate cash to a local family in need. We like to get them a gift basket of some sort as well. Then we doorbell ditch the basket and money to the family, and the kids get to be "ninja elves" while doing it. The kids were really invested in the family we chose this year and donated almost all their money they had saved up. Between the three of them, they donated almost $50. I was really proud of their generosity and love.
December 10: Help kids make gifts for extended family
Last year, we spent way too many hours working on gifts for all the extended family members the girls wanted to make gifts for. This year, I had the idea to help the girls write and illustrate a story and then copy it for everyone. I was especially grateful for the simplicity of it when I was so sick and struggled to even do this (I ended up finishing copying the stories ON Christmas day).
December 11: Visit Santa
We went to the library Santa event with cousins and it was cute! The kids loved seeing Santa, especially Oliver. I was sure he wouldn't want to get near Santa without me and was fully planning on holding him by Santa for the picture (that happened with both Parker and Rylee at one point), but he went right up to Santa and got in his lap, even cutting the line of cousins to do so.
December 12: Birthday Party for Jesus
Growing up, we always did a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Eve, to help us focus on what matters most. I loved that tradition. While I love the new traditions I have with my own family now, I still wanted to pass on the birthday party to my kids. We keep it simple, but we always have a dessert of some sort. Then we sing to Jesus and eat the dessert. We also give a "gift" to Jesus--we think of something we can do during the coming year to be better and serve others more. We write it down and put it in an envelope for Him. Then we finish the night by watching The Christ Child (which always makes me cry!).
December 13: Paper Snowflakes
I love doing a snow day with the kids, especially on years like this last one where we don't get a lot (or any, apparently) of actual snow. This year, we only managed to do paper snowflakes, instead of doing other snow activities, because there was a stomach bug going through the kids. But the kids had a lot of fun making the snowflakes and even with all the sickness, I did manage to get the snowflakes hung up in their room before Christmas.
December 14: Make cookies!
Making cookies is one of my favorite days of the season! I love making Christmas cookies and I make lots of batches of my favorite to share with neighbors. Then the girls help me deliver them all! I make snickerdoodle, peanut butter kiss, white chocolate chip, and M&M cookies.
December 15: Attend the Nutcracker
This year, we had a girls night and went with Grandma Lindi, Aunt Melissa, Auntie Hannah, and their cousin Elizabeth to see a local production of The Nutcracker. The girls loved, it, but after we got there, Rylee (who hadn't had the stomach bug) told me her stomach hurt. Then she fell asleep for a little bit (which never happens anymore that early) and when she woke up, her stomach was really hurting her. We made it through without any incidents (like her throwing up all over) and she says she still loved going even though she felt sick during it.
December 16: Make Christmas cards
The girls love the Beehive Home near us, so they made some Christmas cards for some of their friends there. It was a good activity I didn't want to bring them around anyone else after Rylee feeling sick the night before (but she woke up feeling better and wanting to do Christmas stuff).
December 17: Make gifts for siblings
This is a tradition I got from my aunt--I love the idea of the kids crafting a gift for each other rather than buying more things. The kids love it too. They go through Pinterest with me until they find something they are both capable of making and also excited about giving to their sibling. This was the first day Ben and I started to feel sick--Ben with a terrible sore throat and me with the stomach bug.
December 18: Breakfast and Poems
We powered through our sickness and did breakfast for dinner (waffles leftover) and read Christmas poems. When I first envisioned this, I thought we would do it at actual breakfast, but being sick, that just didn't happen. I want to try it again next year when I'm feeling better.
December 19: Candy Cane Hunt
I usually do a lot of different candy cane activities on this day (and invite cousins over to do it with us), but Ben and I were just feeling too sick. I still wasn't over my stomach bug all the way and I had the cold that Ben had gotten (though different symptoms). I managed to hide a candy cane for each child around the house and we read the book together while they ate it.
December 20: Look at Christmas lights
This was a "power through" moment for me, taking the kids to see Christmas lights. I really just wasn't feeling great and Ben was feeling even worse. I knew the kids had their hearts set on going though, and we had fun with it. They love the dancing light houses, so we found as many of those as we could. Oliver threw up in his car seat while we were out, so that was awful to clean up when I got home, but the girls were so glad to go.
December 23: Christmas cookies
This was what we were supposed to be doing on this day, but we actually ended up making the cookies on Christmas Eve and decorating them on Christmas Day. You'll notice we skipped three days with no activities. Ben's throat was still so bad (for five days) and my cold gave me the worst sinus infection I had ever had. I could barely function. On the 23rd, I went into Urgent Care and they gave me some antibiotics that really helped, but I didn't have it in me to do a lot of Christmas activities. We mostly watched a lot of Christmas movies and the kids played with the toys and games they were getting from a sweet neighbor who did the 12 days of Christmas for us (whoever you are, THANK YOU, you have no idea how much it meant!).
December 24: Christmas Eve traditions
Christmas Eve this year was a little different for us than normal, but it was a great one. Ben and I were still sick, but feeing so much better, it almost didn't matter. We normally relax and play games in the morning, but we ended up cleaning out the pantry and trying to catch up on a bunch of Christmas stuff we'd fallen behind on. Then we went to his parent's house for soup for dinner and the nativity (my favorite Christmas Eve tradition!). After going home, we got in our Christmas pajamas, opened a present each (a new blanket), set out cookies for Santa, read The Night Before Christmas, and sang Silent Night before putting the kids to bed.
It was a crazy year, but I couldn't be more grateful for the new memories we made together and the wonderful feeling of Christmas that we had in our home despite everything going on.
No comments:
Post a Comment