I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I have been a little absent from the blog. The holiday season got to be a little overwhelming- and it isn't even over yet! In addition to New Year's, I have four birthdays to celebrate over the next few days. Today is my father-in-law and my youngest niece's, New Year's Eve is my mother-in-law's, and New Year's Day is my oldest niece's. Crazy busy time. Down below are just some snippets of my past few weeks. I'm sorry I haven't been around much, but that will be changing soon- promise! New year, new blog resolutions :)
First up, on December 6th, I became an Auntie one more time to a very handsome boy. I would love to share a million pictures of him, but I don't know how my sister would feel about that :) So now between my sisters and I, there are four girls and three boys. My parents like to joke that we can now start a softball team with the grandchildren. My sister (the one who just gave birth) also celebrated her birthday on December 11th.
Since I was late to the Advent calendar party, I did a twelve days of Christmas countdown with my kids. Above are some of the presents they received. They didn't really get that they were Advent presents, so they called them bonus presents instead. It really worked with distracting them from their actual presents.
So I won't lie, I didn't put up my Christmas tree until about six days before Christmas. I hadn't planned on that, but I had a procedure done on one of my toes that limited my mobility for a while, so that hampered my tree set-up. I felt bad for my children, but we had our mini pink Christmas tree up in our bathroom since the beginning of the month, and I put up new Christmas lights in there, so at least they had some festive details. I also added a garland to our fireplace mantle, along with the Elf of the Shelf Pop! Funko and I wrapped some sparkly garland on our mailbox outside. So it wasn't completely Grinchy here, but next year will be better.
Christmas Eve morning we took the kids to see Frozen (finally).I liked it, although it was pretty sad. And *tiny spoiler ahead if you haven't seen it* I really hate that Disney always kills the parents off in their movies. But visually it was stunning, and Olaf was my favorite.
Also on Christmas Eve, we made reindeer food to sprinkle on the lawn. Its just Grape Nuts, glitter and star confetti- but my kids enjoyed making it, and really had a blast tossing it all over the yard. I let them put it out during the day since I knew we weren't going to be home later that night. It was so sunny on Christmas Eve, so the glitter really sparkled on our lawn.
Christmas was great. A very long day, but it was good. My husband and I bought our children the Wii U Zelda edition (which was really hard to find), and that was easily their favorite present. I'm excited to try out Wii U Fit, if I can ever pry the controllers from their hands lol. I received an Asus tablet from my husband, which I love. And pretty much everyone else got me gift cards, which is okay by me! I bought my husband some new shoes for him to play Airsoft in and some 49ers PJ pants. I was pleased with myself because I didn't have to use any of his money to buy it (I'm a stay at home mom with no income of my own). I always hate buying him presents with his own money, it just feels wrong. But I sold some stuff earlier in the year and made enough to buy some gifts. He did buy himself one gift that I gave him though- it was Killzone for the PS4. We bought it in a bundle from Target- it was buy any two games, get one free. And we had bought two games for our kids' Christmas presents in the same bundle. But he was the one that told me to wrap it up and give it to him lol, so I did.
Here is Pentatonix singing my favorite Christmas song Carol of the Bells. I didn't know who they were until I started watching The Sing Off this season.
Boy, you know that saying, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade? Well, I could make a lemonade distribution center with all the lemons life has been throwing at me lately. I finally feel well enough to sit here and type out this post, that I had originally wanted to do earlier. I mean, Advent calendars are for Christmas countdowns, and here we are, already seven days into December. If anything, maybe it will inspire you to do a smaller countdown (which I may do with my children), or its something to keep in the back of your head for next Christmas. I love Advent calendars, even though I wasn't raised particularly religious. It was always fun to pop out a little piece of chocolate as I counted down Santa's arrival. I've bought them in the past for my kids, but my daughter isn't a huge chocolate fan, and my son isn't as impressed with candy as he used to be (which is good)- so I didn't buy any this year. But I did see a few blog posts about homemade Advent calendars that I thought were so cool, and I thought I'd share them with you.
The first one is from Kaelah at Little Chief Honeybee. I really admire her blog and also how well she's done at being a great stepmom to Toby (stepping into a parenting role is no easy task). She makes me want to do more creative things for my children!
This one is from Kristin at rukristin. Its an Advent calendar filled of reasons why you love your spouse. This idea can easily translate into why you love your children. So clever.
This is from a post last year on A Beautiful Mess, but still completely relevant. Its an Advent tree!
Also from A Beautiful Mess is this year's Advent calendar. This is so adorable.
I love the handmade envelopes.
And if these aren't enough inspiration, there's an e-book to help you out!
