Santa Babies

Today as our advent activity, I took the kids with my sister and mom to see Santa in the mall. The line was ridiculously short-- just the way I like it! J hopped right up onto Santa's lap, and H claimed she was too big to sit down, so she just stood by him. I even had to convince her to do that by telling her that J wouldn't be scared that way.
This Christmas season has been so laid back.. I did have advent activities planned, but if we didn't get to it or it didn't happen, I didn't push to make it work. We probably did an activity every other day, and still have some winter ideas that we haven't done yet which will probably come in handy when we are going stir crazy in February.
Here are a few of the activities on our advent list for this year (pretty much the same as last year)
*made handprint wreaths
*pinecone/peanutbutter/birdseed birdfeeders
*set up and played with the nativity
*decorate Christmas cookies
*made a paper chain to hang in the doorway
*took kids to see santa
*set up the Christmas tree

Still to do: go sledding, make paper snowflakes, build a snowman, go snowmobiling (we actually need snow to do these things though!!)

jingle all the way

We set up our Christmas tree as the 4th advent activity.. only 3 broken ornaments later, it was done and we were loving the sight of our (fakey) pretty tree. The snowman ornament is H's. J's ornament is a tractor and I for some reason did not get a picture of it.

boxing day

You know how kids like playing with the boxes their toys come in better than the toy themselves at Christmas? I can do ya one better.
My kids like playing with a box their daddy's new gun cabinet came in.
(Well, at least after J got over his fear of the dark tunnel)