Our entire christmas was pretty great this year. For some reason though, I kept thinking about how much work Christmas is as an adult--ha! I maybe could've used a little more down time for me, but I loved creating the magic of christmas for my little family.
Each year we do a 25 days of christ countdown with our advent boxes.
We take turns opening a box and placing the small ornament on our little tree. We talk about the story of christ that it represents. As a fun surprise, I usually hide a few small candy canes in a couple of boxes and little tickets that represent a family gift we get to open that day (christmas movie, christmas book, game, puzzle, etc). I didn't have any candy canes yet when I assembled the advent this year, but I planned to sneak some into it later on. However, it was pretty funny when the first day we pulled it out Perry took his turn. He peeked into the first box, but didn't see what he liked so he told Layla she could open it. Then he went to the second box. And then the third. And by the fourth box we figured out what he was looking for--those candy canes! I told him I didn't have any in there right then and I could see the "then what is the point of this??" look. He melted down over this so we decided to just leave the candy canes out this year. And so then every time we sat down he was in pursuit of a ticket for a family gift. We just kept reminding him it wasn't about the gifts ad he stayed calm about it the rest of the month. Except for the one time when we opened the last box for the day (because we ended up only doing it every 3-4 days) and when he realized there wasn't going to be a ticket in it, he said "Awww, no ticket?! I'm leaving!" and walked upstairs to go play.
On Christmas Eve, we received two family gifts from our last advent. We gave the kids Kapla blocks (which seem so simple, but are pretty spectacular).
We also got a National Parks scratch map. One of our family goals, especially this next year, is to visit as many national parks and monuments as we can. This is a fun way to keep track of it.
My parents invited us to come over for lunch after church on Sunday. They passed out gifts to everyone. And turned B into Cinderella.
When my mom asked Kacin what he wanted for Christmas this year, he told her money. So she gave him a big tub of pennies. He was pretty excited to dig through it and find lots of bills in it.
We went home that night and made cookies for Santa. Perry was so excited for Santa to come that he ran off to bed on his own pretty much as soon as we got home that evening. Though I don't think he actually fell asleep until past 10pm!
I read books to the older boys that night by Christmas Tree light. I've been reading christmas books to the little ones all month, but that was the first time I was able to sit down with both older boys.
Once everyone finally did go to bed, Santa came.
But in the morning, at 7am (because we are cruel and make our kids wait), most of our kids were awake and snuggled into our bed. Then we gathered at the top of the stairs. As per tradition, we watched a video about the true meaning of Christmas, Christ, before the kids lined up to go downstairs and see what Santa brought.
I hope you also had a Merry Christmas!
