But it was easy- if you lower your expectations. Not everyone is going to be home so you can do it together. Not everyone wants to do it. Sometimes you just run out of time. It's OK! Some of the pre printed ideas didn't work for me- so I didn't use them. Also, I got to plan when things happened so I got to decide when we did what. If it was a busy day, it was an easy activity. Sometimes, I moved things around if I could tell it was not going to work out. There were also blank ones so I got to write things that work for our family. It turned out to be really fun. I tried to put the traditions that we do every year, so it wasn't really adding anything to our December. Here are some of the things we did:
Make a paper countdown chain (we do this anyway. It is a great first day of the month.)
Have hot chocolate with marshmellows
Read a Christmas book.
Play with Nativities. Sometimes you end up with sheep on the stable.
Make paper snowflakes
Make and deliver Christmas cookies to the neighbors. (this was when the kids took a thank you card and treat to their church teachers)
Make Gingerbread houses. (I made sure this was the same day as the scouts made them at my house anyway. It was not a lot of extra work for me.)
Watch a Christmas movie and have popcorn
Have a candlelight dinner
Wrap presents
Bake Christmas Cookies
Do secret service for someone in your family
Make candy canes from pipe cleaners
Play a board game
Make a Christmas ornament
Play in the snow
Wrap a gift for Jesus
Drive around in your jammies looking at Christmas lights.
Make paper stars. (I don't think we even did that one. But I did teach then how to make origami santas- I had to teach Tanner's whole class how to do that)
Sleep in a tent or fort. (this one worked out that it was Jaxon's winter campout so he was going to anyway! We set up our pup tent downstairs for the other boys)
Deliver neighbor gifts. (I am days late on this one- but we did make the tags that day)
Stay in jammies all day (we did this after church on Sunday)
Tomorrow's is: Read the Christmas story in the scriptures!
It was pretty easy to do since I used the theme of "lower my expectations" and it did not turn out to be a stress.
Christmas funny:
Chase was talking about the tree before we set it up. "Mom, can we put the tree in my room?" I told him no and why not. "But mom, don't you want to earn 10 thousand hundred dollars?" When I asked him why I would be earning that money, he responded, "I really want to catch Santa but I have to go to bed. If the tree is in my room, I will catch him and everyone will give us money." He argued about it for a while.
OK-- but we didn't put the tree in his room.
Non Christmas funny:
Alex said, "Mom, what does "uv" mean?" I had no idea what he was talking about and asked him to explain. "Well, I know what Family means, I know what Evening means, But I don't know what the uv means- you know Family uv Evening." I wrote it out for him so he could see the words and it blew him away. He didn't know we were saying "Family Home Evening" this whole time.
1 comment:
Fun traditions!
That's funny about Alex. Until last year Lydia thought we were having Family Home Nevening. I don't even know what a nevening is! She was blown away when she learned it's an EVENING. She said, "Well THAT makes more sense!"
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