It's Christmas Time!

It seems we have managed to jam pack a bunch of Christmas activities into our December before the first week has even ended! We started the month off right with the Christmas parade downtown on Thursday. Owen and I went last year and really enjoyed it, so we dragged Olivia and Dee-da along this time. The kiddos wore their pajamas and we took blankets so we could all snuggle up while we watched.

On Friday night, Grandpa Bruce had a table set up at the monthly Art Walk in town, so we went by to see him. I did not intend to stay long, but there were so many things to see and do that we ended up staying for a couple hours. Some of the stores were open and everyone had little snacks so we hopped from shop to shop filling our bellies with goodies.

On Saturday, Owen and I did a little shopping with Meme, then headed to a birthday party for a friend. Later in the evening, our church hosted a Birthday Party for Jesus for the kids, so Jacob and I dropped them off, then attended our Sunday school Christmas party.

Like I said, we crammed a bunch of stuff into 3 days and were all exhausted (and some of us kind of cranky) today, so we had a pretty low key day after church this morning. I'm thinking we better slow down a little or we may not make it to Christmas!

In an attempt to stop and savor each day leading up to Christmas Day, I made an Advent calendar of sorts. Last year I strung a bunch of plastic cups up and filled each one with a tiny treat for Owen and each night we would take one cup down. It was a good way to let him know how many days were left until Christmas and an easy activity for us to do in the chaos that seemed to be last year. This year I decided to ramp it up a bit since he and Olivia are older and since I can steal ideas from Pinterest!

I attached these little bags to a ribbon that I secured to a couple nails on a blank wall in the living room. Each bag contains either an activity, craft, small gift or soft peppermints.

I'm not so crafty, so this little project was perfect for me.

Here we are looking to see what one of the bags contained.
We had to play a little catch-up, so days 1, 2 and 3 all had activities we had already done.

Day 4 had peppermints!
Owen thought that was a fun surprise and when Olivia woke from her nap,
she enjoyed her treat, too.

Owen had a little craft project leftover from the Birthday Party for Jesus,
so he was busy working on that for a little while this afternoon.

Like I said, we haven't wasted a moment since December started! I'm looking forward to spending some sweet time with my family this holiday season and celebrating the birth of a precious Baby (although my dad wants to remind everyone that, historically, Jesus was probably born sometime in late summer/early fall-not on December 25th) (: Either way, we'll use this time to remember a gift that was given to us from a heavenly Father who loves us more than we can possibly understand and allow that thought to spur us on to love others in that same way--unconditionally.