Advent Activities

Have been so preoccupied with the move that I felt I was neglecting the magic of the holiday season and opportunities to share it with the boys.  They are all three at a fun age right now where everything is exciting.  So even before I had all the boxes unpacked and things on the walls, I made a point to decorate for Christmas.  Even talked Jay into getting up on the roof to hang the lights outside.  Had to make a nice impression on all our new neighbors :)

I also stole an awesome idea from my good friend, Monica Acosta, in an interesting twist to the advent calendar.  Every year we do the advent calendar where they open the little doors and get candy.  But this year, instead of candy, they got an activity...

So every morning the boys took turns opening the day's envelope to see what exciting new thing(s) we'd be doing that night once Scotty got home from school....they had a lot of fun with it and it gave us all something to look forward to each day. 

Some of the activities included decorating Christmas cookies...though mommy couldn't get the dough to form with the cookie cutters, so they got to decorate plain old round sugar cookies...but at least they were homemade!

even dad joined in...

They made little reindeer and snowman projects

And helped make Christmas rice krispie treats...

And decorate the tree...I am usually meticulous when it comes to the way the decorations go on the tree, ensuring adequate spacing between ornaments. But this year I got over myself and let the boys do it.  It wasn't perfect, there were a few ornament casualties, but they had fun.

Instead of heading into DC to the National Zoo for zoolights, I took the boys through a festival of lights parade at the Bull Run park.  They got a kick out of it but I have not mastered the night-time photo shooting trick, thus the pics didnt turn out, but you get the idea.  Next year definitely gonna do the real zoolights :)