Holiday Cheer

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.

LivSean

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.