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!

Holiday Open House 2011

We had our holiday open house today and it was so much fun! I'd guess about 50 people came over the course of the afternoon, including quite a few of R's classmates and a couple of RUS's and a good deal of our neighbors.

Here's R using our coloring station and filling in some coloring pages I printed off of the internet before the party.

 In this picture you see our main cookie table as well as the christmas tree-making station at the top of the picture--the table covered with the gray snowflake tablecloth has sugar cones, green frosting, and various kinds of m&ms and cinnamon candies for decorating the sugar cone trees with.

And here are our appetizers: cheeseball, cheese and crackers, nuts, clementines, sliced fruit and fruit dip, veggies and veggie dip and hummus, as well as some amazing chipotle-rosemary almonds and cashews that our neighbor made. You can also see some cherry-almond bark and some pistachio brittle that Grammie made, and before long one of our friends brought some delicious frosted chocolate cookies with crushed peppermint on top. HUGE hit.

 And then I didn't take any more pictures until the party was just about over. It's really hard to remember to take pictures while you're having a party! Here's Grampie trying to persuade RUS to eat something other than candy.

 And here's R with her preschool teacher, who is just like me and gets lost even when she kind of knows where she's going, so she got here close to the tail end of the party. It worked out great though because R was pleased as punch to show Ms. L all around the house all by herself.

 And then RUS wanted to get in on the action, too! Don't they all look so cute??

 And here's Grammie and Grampie by our tree . . .

and Grammie and Grampie with R by the tree! RUS was already in bed by this point. Boy, he was tuckered.

ETA: here are some pictures of the Christmas tree craft--the ones that R and RUS did at the party. R only wanted to frost about 1/3 of her tree and RUS just wanted to eat m&m's so the only decoration on his tree is one that J put on for him.

RUS's tree, sitting next to our gingerbread house that we all decorated together to create a centerpiece for the party:

R's tree, sitting next to her gingerbread house from her school gingerbread house decorating party:

Photo shoot with Christmas Tree and Outfits

Email to Santa

We forgot to drop R's Santa list in the Santa mailbox when we saw him today so I told R we could send him an email. Here's the email she composed on my phone.

****
How do you train reindeer      51
12345678
Lu
        Bnmljhda.   2     4.   Rhys.      Rosly
****

P.S. I helped her spell the first sentence. And she explained to me that Lu means "love you.'

A visit with Santa!

Advent Chain Day 11: Visit Santa!

Santa makes a stop at our local apple orchard every year and they give us a free photo so we always go there. They also let you take your own pictures--and of COURSE both of us totally forgot, so you get pictures of the pictures instead.

R and RUS were both so good! RUS was a little shy at first (which is why we don't have a picture of both kids together on Santa's lap). R chatted with him for a few minutes, told him about her list (pink pencil, doll, bubble gum) and that she'd been good and all.

After she got down, RUS looked interested, so we got him on Santa's lap and he and Santa had a conversation I couldn't understand, and then we worked hard to get a picture where he wasn't making a scary smile face. I love how it turned out!!

A conversation with RUS about his Christmas list for Santa

S: RUS, what do you want for Christmas?
RUS: (softly) Doll-uh
J: Did you say dollar?
RUS: No.
S: Well, what did you say?
RUS: Doll
S: Did he say doll?
J: Yes.
R: He wants a doll!
S&J: What kind of doll?
RUS: Blue one.
R: What do you want it to be?
RUS: Macaroni.
R&J: What else do you want for Christmas?
RUS: Orange.
R&J: Orange what?
RUS: Orange blue one.
R&J: ((laughing))
J: I don't even know what that means!
RUS: Orange choo choo train.

Welcome to baking season!

I've had the pleasure of baking with both R and RUS this year--much easier when I have only one at a time (hence why there are no pictures of them BOTH helping me at the same time, ha-ha!)

R at the dentist

She did so great!! Our dentist is amazing, though. We were in and out for her routine cleaning in 20 minutes and the hygenist and I were both so proud of how well she behaved for everything. The sunglasses cracked me up, so I had to take a picture--they do it so the kids aren't bothered by the light shining on their mouth.

I dare somebody to get this for the NFL-lover in their life

Seriously. I dare you. Available at K-Mart for the low, low price of $14.99!

Putting up the Christmas Tree

Finally, here are the pictures of the kids and I decorating our Christmas tree. J and I at long last decided we could do away with the big gray childproofing fence so our tree is fenceless! I'm so happy!! I absolutely adore the tree and all our wacky ornaments. We've got everything, from paper ornaments the kids have made to a set of ornaments I received in an advent calendar my family got when I was a kid to ornaments that say "J 1978" on them to beautiful fancy glass ornaments Grammie has given us because they didn't fit on her tree anymore. I love all the memories that are tied into the different ornaments on our tree.

Advent Chain Days 7-10

7 Make Christmas ornaments!

8 Sing Christmas carols at the piano

This was so much fun! We have quite a few board books with the lyrics to various Christmas songs in them (Little Drummer Boy; Deck the Halls; Jingle Bells; Twelve Days of Christmas; Frosty the Snowman; Up on the Housetop) and J just figured out the music while at the piano. The kids and I tried to sing along. I think "tried" is the operative word, but we all had fun. RUS in particular is really picking up the lyrics, I am very impressed!

9 Watch a Christmas special!

R chose "Rudolph" so we all snuggled in our bed (because we moved the TV into our bedroom to make room for the tree in the living room) and watched the first half. R was so excited because she'd been asking to watch a Christmas movie, or really, any movie, for a few days and we just kept not having the time or opportunity--we've been so busy in the evenings lately.

10 Make cards for grandparents and great-grandparents!

These are still in progress, and I'll try not to ruin the surprise!