25 Days of Christmas - Days 9-15

And the 25 Days of Christmas activities continued . . .

Day 9: Watch a Christmas movie: The Berenstain Bears Christmas Tree
Another good choice for Henry's current Berenstain Bears obsession. I think. Both boys loved watching it, but Henry has insisted that we watch it about half a dozen times since then. Now if only I can convince him to watch the Grinch Who Stole Christmas (the old cartoon version, of course). . .



Day 10: Go out for a special treat
Monday nights are tough to fit activities in since the boys have swimming lessons, so we opted to get a chocolate peppermint shake as a treat after our Burgerville dinner. And it was a hit. I'm glad we split it into separate cups or there is no way the boys would have shared with us!



Day 11: Take a bath with glow sticks
I found some fun Christmas glow wands in the dollar bins at Target, and they were worth every penny. The boys had a blast playing with them in the bath and Henry dried his off and took them to bed with him. They even brought them over to Grandma's house the next day with what little glow was left!













Day 12: Read a Christmas book: How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas?
I saw this Dinosaur series at Costco and thought it was super cute, so we read the Christmas one as our daily activity and the rest are tucked away for Christmas morning (shh!).



Day 13: Wrap gifts
This activity was a bit stressful for Mommy, but the boys seemed to love it. And even though at one point Owen was unrolling the wrapping paper to jump on it and Henry was running away with the tape and gift tags, it really was a fun experience. They both were so excited to tape up the wrapping paper and write on the gift tags. I am just sooo proud of Henry's letter writing! He's been writing his H's for awhile, but recently took an interest in trying out some other letters. He has mastered his H's, O's, E's and is working on N's & R's. The N's are a bit tricky for him, so he gets frustrated, but he just keeps trying. I think his gift tags are the best part of his gifts! And Owen has really taken an interest in drawing and thinks that he is getting away with something when we let him use a real pen.







Day 14: Make Christmas cookies
Grandma came over to our house for round 2 of Christmas cookies. This time we made thumbprint cookies and I just love seeing how much fun Henry is having (and can't wait until next year when Owen is ready to help too). With these cookies, all of us 4 kids used to take a part of the cookie prep. My mom would roll the dough into little balls, Dori would dip the balls into the egg whites, Max would cover them with the chopped walnuts, Cheryl would press her thumb into the cookies on the pan & I would top it with a cherry. Sometimes these roles would switch, but we'd always sit there next to each other like an assembly line crew. Henry took his job very seriously and made sure to place the cherry half right side up into the thumbprint holes. Sometimes it's really hard to believe I'm all grown up and it's MY kids carrying on this tradition!





Day 15: Attend a Holiday party
OK, this one kind of feels like cheating since all we had to do was show up for the Holiday Sweater party, but I figure it's a Christmas activity so it should count.


A self portrait before we left - Henry loved pressing the shutter button on the remote.


All the big brothers & sisters posing sweetly with their baby siblings.


There must have been some secret signal, because all the little brothers & sisters made a break for it at the same time!

I'm having so much fun with these Christmas activities, I'm sad that there's only a few days left of it!

25 Days of Christmas - Days 1-8

Thanks to Pinterest, I heard of a wonderful idea to do a different Christmas activity every day in December until Christmas. In my opinion, there are no shortage of ways to celebrate the holidays, so I was up for the challenge! Of course when I saw this in November, I imagined an amazing handmade countdown calendar hanging on the wall with an envelope containing the days activities in each day's pocket. However, between my lack of time (and energy) to make one of those and my realization that it is impossible to know what a 1 & 3 year old are going to be up for doing 25 days from now, that never happened. Instead, I wrote out all sorts of activities, gathered up some Christmas books, movies and other fun stuff (thanks dollar bin at Target!) and just take it day by day depending on our time and their moods. Every morning, Henry asks what our Christmas activity is for the day, so I think it's been successful, even if it's just written down on a scratch pad at the last minute! And with that, here are our 1st 8 days of activities . . .

Day 1: Take a Horse & Carriage Ride
Ok, so this one we just kind of stumbled on. It wasn't written on my list, but we happened to be in Millennium Park when they were doing it. And the boys loved it!











Day 2: Read a Christmas book
Because this one is fun and super easy to do on any night, this activity has popped up a few times. On this particular night, we read The Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear. Henry is loving all his Berenstain Bears books (the entire stack of them must be in his bed each night and at naptime), so this was a hit for him. Owen thought it was a bit long, but did listen for parts of it.



Day 3: Make Christmas Ornaments
The fun for this day's activity completely belongs to my friend Sam. She invited us over to make salt dough ornaments with Claire & Porter. It was a messy activity, so I didn't manage to get any pictures of my boys doing it, but I did make sure to capture the final product.





Day 4: Watch a Christmas movie
Both boys enjoyed watching Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas (and the special privilege of watching TV while eating dinner).



Day 5: Zoolights
This is one of our favorite traditions each Christmas. We head to the Oregon Zoo to explore all the amazing lights they've put up and ride the train around. This year we invited Grandma Debbie and she was so sweet to pack us warm grilled cheese sandwiches & tomato soup. We managed to pick a dry evening, but the warm food was definitely perfect on a cold night. . .











Dinner under the fire breathing dragon - which surprisingly did not warm us up at all!

























Day 6: Make Christmas Cookies
This is a tradition that I've carried with me from childhood. Every Christmas, my mom would get us kids together to bake dozens of different kinds of cookies to put on plates and hand out to family. While we've definitely reduced the amount of cookies we make each year, my mom and I still make sure to get together for baking! Even after making 8 dozen candy cane cookies for a cookie exchange I attended (so fun!), Henry was begging to make more. So I think he'll be a fan of this tradition as well!



Day 7: Visit Santa
Henry was so excited to visit Santa and was talking for days about what he'd ask Santa for. However, once he was in there, he got completely starstruck and couldn't say anything. He really reminded me of Ralphie from the movie A Christmas Story. Santa even asked Henry if he'd like a toy for Christmas and Henry just slowly nodded his head. As we were leaving, he whispered to Daddy, asking him if he would tell Santa what he wanted. And Owen was just not interested in being held by Santa at all!



Day 8: Write a letter to Santa
Since telling Santa in person hadn't exactly worked, we decided to write a letter to Santa and have Leon (our Elf - more about him at the end of this post) deliver the note to Santa. So, we sat down at the table with our paper and pen to write a letter to Santa. And as soon as we sat down, Henry stated that the letter he would like to write to Santa was "H". I hadn't even thought about the fact that he had no idea what writing a letter meant! After I explained what it meant (and told him he could sign the letter with his "H"), he dictated it out to me:

"I would like a toy kitchen with toy plates with food stuff too (like Eleanor's house) for Christmas."

And then we very carefully handed it to Leon (making sure to be extra careful to not touch him), and he took it to Santa!




Side Story - Leon the Elf:
Our Elf on the Shelf arrived last Christmas and the boys weren't too into him. So, he just hid in different parts of the house and I don't even think we gave him a name. This year, we read the story to Henry to explain what he was (an elf that watches whether they've been good or bad during the day and then reports back to Santa at night. If you haven't heard of this, you can check it out here) and decided to give him a name. Henry kept insisting that he didn't know any name but "Henry" and it couldn't be Henry, so we finally whipped out the baby name book and turned to a random page. I told Henry the first name I saw on the page, "Leon" and Henry said that was it. And so Leon the elf stays at our house during Christmas season before he heads back to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. Henry & Owen don't really seem to understand the whole naughty or nice part of the elf, but they love to look for him each morning. Henry always make sure to show him to us and Owen gets so excited pointing and grunting at the elf when he finds him. To be honest, the idea of having a little elf watching us everyday and showing up in random places in the house sounded kind of creepy to me, but the boys seem to love him!

Spinning

And in case you were looking for something fun to do this weekend . . .

Varga Family

Last weekend I was given another opportunity to practice my family photoshoot skills with my friend Amy & her family. As the day approached, it was looking like we'd be doing pictures in the pouring rain. So, I packed the umbrellas, researched good covered areas for pictures and scoured Pinterest for rainy family picture ideas. But we were pleasantly surprised to catch a break in the rain and ended up taking pictures with the sun shining! With that said, here are a few of my favorites . . .





















Thank you Varga family!!