Advent Chain: 12-18

12 Read a new Christmas book!

J and I broke out Santa's Reindeer, which is an amazingly detailed book giving just about any detail you might want to know about Santa's reindeer and how they live, eat, work, and play. It's fabulous.

13 Make a clove orange

I used to do this when I was little with my mother. We'd stick as many cloves as we could into an orange and give them away or tuck them into a corner of our house. R and J actually made a clove clementine that was nicely displayed in our half-bathroom during our holiday party.

14 Bake cookie of your choice!

We let R pick what she wanted to make and the thing she wanted to make was Peppermint Fudge, which I didn't have all the ingredients for (no condensed milk in the house, unfortunately). So the kids helped J make another batch of peanut-butter crisp rice treats with chocolate chips, and he bravely embarked upon an episode of "Baking with Two Small Ones Afoot!"

15 Decorate Gingerbread House

As it happened, the date we picked for decorating our own gingerbread house (from a kit, of course) was the same as the scheduled date for R's class gingerbread decorating party! So J and I got to visit her class and hear them sing a variety of holiday songs and then help all the kids decorate graham crackers that had been assembled into houses with the help of frosting.

Then, at home, after dinner, the four of us embarked upon what ended up being a relatively complicated gingerbread house assembling project.

Opening the box. Look at the anticipation!!

Only, step 1 is to take a sharp knife and a ruler and cut the edges of the house so it all fits together better. Kids, stay away from this part!

So what were R and RUS doing while J was meticulously fixing the sides of the house? Why, popping bubble wrap, of course! Next time you need a "toy" to occupy your kids for half an hour at a time, just throw some bubble wrap at them and call it a day.

Here's J assembling the house while RUS continues to pop bubble wrap.

Whoops! One of the sides broke! R, hold these two parts together for me, wouldja?

Almost finished assembling!

Aaaaand, now we can decorate! Here's R copying the house on the box with the way she's arranging the candies on top. She worked really hard to copy it exactly.

And RUS had to be carefully supervised or he was just going to eat candy instead of making the house.

One whole side of the roof is covered with these tiny colorful balls that RUS was instrumental in placing for us.

 

16 Drive around and see Christmas lights

There are a few houses in our area that go all out on the lights. We drove around and saw a few of them.

17 Have a Christmas Party!

See post below!

18 Watch The Polar Express

R was absolutely enthralled with the entire movie. RUS was about ready to conk out just before the train reached the North Pole, but he seemed to really enjoy it, too. We'll see how much he remembers of it in the morning!