I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was busy, but full of family, fun and good food. I really enjoyed seeing four stockings on the wall this year, and though he didn't understand it all, Mr Dimples. seemed to enjoy his first Christmas.
As is usual at this time of year, we are dreaming and planning ready for 2008. There will be some big changes around here, both in our home life, and on my little corner of the blogworld here. More about that tomorrow though. Happy New Year!
The past 3 days of advent activities haven't quite gone to plan.
Day three - "Let's pack a picnic dinner and eat down at the waterfront". Yes, we ate a picnic dinner. Technically we had water frontage, but not the type I had planned. Due to some rather heavy rain and storms, which has been pretty constant these past few days, we ate our picnic dinner on the lounge room floor, while listening to and watching the rain outside.
Despite being washed out, our picnic dinner was quite enjoyable. Peachfuzz especially seemed to like the novelty of eating dinner on a rug on the living room floor.
Day four saw us reading our "Can You See What I See - Night Before Christmas" book. This is one of my favourite holiday traditions. I bought this book two Christmases ago, on sale at a local book store for about $8. Given that it had just been released, I think that was a pretty good deal! I love having it as a "coffee table book" each December, for family and friends to pick up and browse when they have a minute or two. It's a gorgeous book full of picture puzzles, with lists of things to search for in each picture.
Because I love having this book out and ready to curl up with whenever the mood strikes, I had to make this one of our earliest advent activities. I didn't want to get it out until after we had a chance to sit and search together as a family. There is a little man who is featured in every picture throughout the book. We spent about 10 minutes with Peachfuzz, finding him on every page. After she was in bed, Papa Bear and I got about halfway through searching for the list of things on the first page, before we were both so tired we had to call it a night. But the book is out now, and we are enjoying looking for a rabbit here, or an elf there, whenever we get a spare few minutes.
Today's activity was supposed to be to make Christmas cards for our family. I had some grand ideas involving paint and handprints, but as so often happens with small children, our day didn't go quite to plan, and said craft project was never completed. We did have fun making the beginnings of a reindeer painting with Peachfuzz's handprints. I'll post pictures of it tomorrow, after we finish it off.
Other than advent activities, I have been busy with a bit of Christmas crafting. I signed up for a Holiday Traditions Exchange, and I have been madly trying to make my handmade decoration to send to my swap partner, which is due out next Monday - eek! It's nothing too fancy, but I've been enjoying putting this little package together, and can't wait to share photos next week after I've sent it. As soon as this package is ready to go, I'll be moving on to a Christmas stocking for Mr. Dimples, followed by a dozen or so little components of various gifts for the kids and a few other people. Life is never dull!
"Today we will decorate gingerbread with our extended family". That's what our advent card read for the day. Our gingerbread house making tradition started way back in 2003, when I spent an entire day (literally) baking and decorating the house all on my own. Christmas 2004 saw us decorating a collapsed gingerbread house with Damien and Miranda. We skipped two years, and now here we are in 2007. We decided to invite our families over to decorate gingerbread with us.
Papa Bear and I spent much of last night, and most of the early afternoon today, cutting and baking gingerbread. Each person was given a gingerbread man and their initial to decorate as they wished.
We invited anybody who wanted to contribute, to help decorate the house. The white chocolate roof tiles are care of my dad, M & M filled chimney by Papa Bear's brother, windows by my sister and door by me.
Sadly, just as in 2004, the softness of the gingerbread and the weight of the chocolate collapsed the house. Peachfuzz seemed rather distressed about the whole thing. It still tasted good though!
I'm pretty sure today's activity was a success, despite it being a lot of work. After everyone left, Papa Bear said "That was really good babe, we should definitely do this every year!"
Two Christmases ago, we started a new family tradition. I made an "Activity Advent Calendar", with a different family activity for each day in December leading up to Christmas. It was my "quick and easy" version, because I made it at 4pm on December 1st, after seeing some similar ideas on a couple of the blogs I frequent. Last year we were overseas for Christmas, so we didn't do the advent calendar. But this year, it's back! Over the next 24 days, I'll be sharing a little about each of the activities we are enjoying as a family.
Each day, the activity card is taken down, and Papa Bear reads the card to the rest of us (I'm the only one who already knows each activity). There is also some sort of gift or treat that corresponds with the activity. Today's was "Let's have a tree decorating party" and each of the kids received a new ornament. Another of our traditions is to buy each child a new ornament every Christmas. On your very first Christmas, you get a photo ornament, which is what Mr. Dimples received today. We chose a little girl sitting on a music note for Peachfuzz, because she loves to sing, and spends most of her day requesting to sing songs together.
To make it a real party, I turned on the Christmas music, and prepared some tasty Christmas treats to snack on while we decorated. We had chocolate covered strawberries, white christmas, shortbread and strawberry "champagne" (Maison). I was very excited to use my Spode Christmas plate (far right), which our friends Norm and Mary gave me when we were with them last December.
The kids both hung their new ornaments on the tree, with a little help from Papa Bear and I.
A few decorations later, and it was done!
