I can't believe the Christmas season is in full swing! This year I am trying to give my family the gift of memories.
On Monday night, Jodi invited us down to her house for a joint Family Home Evening (Rob's family and Renae's family were there as well). Sean gave the lesson and we made graham cracker houses. The kids all had fun creating their masterpieces. Olivia went the non-traditional route and constructed a graham cracker theater (complete with reclining seats and a big screen) instead of a house. Sean and Warren were surprisingly detail oriented with their houses, and David just enjoyed being around all the sugar! Every time he spotted a new type of candy he said, "I didn't get one of those" and put it on his house. He had every single kind of candy available on his house (and did plenty of sampling).
The following images were borrowed from Jodi's blog. I didn't have my camera with me.
Liv
Sean
Warren
David
Tanner and Eric
Michelle
Rylee (Poor Ry. She tried so hard to have a fancy roof. It was just not meant to be)
Kirsten
Kamryn
Lexi
Coleman
The Whole Gang deep in concentration:
My intention was to line up our houses once we got them home to take a photo of all of them together. Mine was the only house that made it home in one piece. Darin was busy admiring some festive lights on the way home and swerved to miss a car coming the opposite direction which caused all of the kids' houses to topple slightly. This, of course, gave them licence to begin eating their creations. Because I could see the swerving take place I was prepared and my house remains intact. Here it is in all its lonely glory:
I have always wanted to have an advent calendar filled with fun memory making things to do. Jodi told me about this idea and I ran with it.
It's a mini muffin tin. The squares of paper are 2 1/2 X 2 1/2 and mounted on magnets. I got a big magnet sheet at Robert's, cut it to the right size, then mounted the paper on it (It was really easy. The sheet of magnet had sticky stuff on one side, so I just had to peel the protective sheet off the magnet and put the patterned paper on top). I printed out the numbers and cut them with a circle punch, then added it to the squares with a glue stick. Each slot contains 8 M&M's: one red and one green for each child (minus
Briggy of course) and a slip of paper containing an activity to do as a family. Some are outings, some are service ideas, some are very simple (less than 5 minutes). Here's a little preview of tomorrow's slot:
It hangs on our wall. Each morning we take it down to reveal that day's activity (the kids take turns), then we hang it back up so little hands aren't tempted to get an advance in their M&M allotment. (This isn't my wall, by the way. I put the calendar on my hope chest to take the picture for lighting purposes.) I like that I can make adjustments as necessary based on my mood, the mood of the children and other things that come up. For example, if the kids are especially rotten I can quickly switch the paper that reads, "drink hot chocolate and wish on a star" with "go to bed with no supper and pray really hard that Santa will still come". (Just kidding. We call it dinner, not supper.)
Anyway, I am excited about it and hope it works out well for our family. It makes me even more excited about Christmas, knowing that we have lots of fun and meaningful plans for the season.
Can you spot Warren? I love his smile. (A little side note here. Adding to the entertainment factor of the program was the girl directly in front of Warren-our neighbor Ellie. She held the corners of her dress and swayed back and forth during every song. It was priceless! It's not every day you get to wear a fancy dress to school.) 
Great job, Warren!
Since 99% of my good ideas are borrowed, I know I borrowed this from someone (Maleen, possibly?). On our way up to Festival of Trees, the kids and I listed some things that we thought would be unlikely to see as a tree decoration. This outing was perfectly timed. Rylee was clogging, so we were able to support her, have cousins to enjoy the outing with, and have a few extra sets of hands to help with Brig. Here are some of the things on our list that we found. It was very exciting when we saw something on our I Spy list. 
Football
Angel (this one was pretty much a given, but it was still exciting to find it):
Spiderman:
We never did find Olivia's hamburger, but we did find this tree. We counted it.
We also saw something that wasn't on our list. A Josh! (my nephew)
Check out who is on the tippy top of Santa's "nice" list. He was elated! I think this more than made up for all the times my kids have browsed the personalized pencil/key chain section to find all the names except Warren.
It is always sobering to see all the photos of the people who are being honored. It tugs at my heartstrings and reminds me that each day counts. (That last sentence will make the next paragraph seem very ironic. Oh well. Here I go.) I will admit that I grew very weary of saying, "Get up off the floor" (they were tagging each other Mini Mode style), "Stop chasing each other", "Watch where you're going", "Please stop running" "Stop bugging each other" and then on the ride home, "Please be kind", "If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all". I was about to yell, "I'm trying to make fun memories, now will you please knock it off!" Instead, I cranked up Christmas music in the van loud enough that they couldn't hear each other's insults and I couldn't hear the arguing or the tattling. It worked, because after not too long, I turned around to see them like this: (don't worry. I was stopped at a red light with no other cars when I took these photos. The one of Brig I took as I was getting him out of the car)
I will still call this outing a success. I know that it's normal for siblings to bicker occasionally. If we waited for our kids to be best friends to go on outings, we would be hermits. I know that they love each other, even if they don't always show it. I hope that when they grow up, they will remember happy times sprinkled in with the less than ideal. 
