Punky's Cluttered Mind: Advent Calendar Activities

The list, of course, was meant to have 24 numbers. But, as it turned out, we are very busy people!!! Pre-school, play-dates, going out, church activities...I felt that if I were to try to do every single one of our planned activities, I would have made the kiddos miserable and wouldn't enjoy this holiday season myself either. So we took it easy, slow, and only did things when we actually had free time AND were in the mood. I think that's the best approach to anything! The kiddos loved every single thing we did, and there was actually some degree of anticipation: "Is today the day for the jars and projects??" "Yeah!!!" :)

Besides the activities, we also read to our oldest son from the book "The Jesus Bible" every night, starting with Jesus' birth story and explaining along the way the story and the meaning of our Salvation.

So here it is, a very condensed report of what we did for Advent this year:

1. Planting Paperwhites.

The hope was that they would bloom on or around Christmas, and...they did!!!

Paperwhite update: December 28th, 2011

Full bloom!

2. Deck the halls!!!

I let the kids decorate our tree this year. It actually didn't turn out too bad :)

3. Put the lights on our roof.

Of course, we chose the coldest day of December (or so it seemed)

4. Cutting out paper snowflakes!

5. Decorating a Gingerbread House!

As you can see from the picture, it was a total FAIL. That thing fell about 4 times, before we called it quits. Still loads of fun, which is what counts the most, right? :)