Adventures in La La Land

This is my plan for this year in case you're looking for ideas (includes affiliate links): Dec. 1. Unwrap a “First Day of Advent” gift.   Adventures in Odyssey Countdown to Christmas  - my goal is to listen to these at night during dinner Dec. 2. 7th annual Birthday Party for Jesus Dec. 3. Get and decorate Christmas tree Dec. 4. Open special ornament and put it on the tree Every year I buy each kid an ornament that is indicative of something they enjoyed or did that year Dec. 5. Buy presents for your siblings Dec. 6. Write/color/make something for Judie (our Compassion International child) Dec. 7. Paint/decorate ornaments  Buy cheap clear ornaments, squirt paint inside, swirl around - hours of entertainment Dec. 8. School Christmas program Dec. 9. See The Star movie Dec. 10. Church Christmas program Dec. 11. Make tea light snowman ornaments Dec. 12. Dinner with Great Grandma and Grandpa, see the trees and trains at Frederick Meijer Ga...

As per tradition I waited until the last minute again to put together this year's Advent calendar/activities. I finished it at 10:30 last night, but I think it's my favorite so far. We're going on a journey with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem: Every day, the girls will move Mary and Joseph (stuck to a magnet) up the path. As we go, the girls will flip over the numbers to reveal that day's activity. Along the way, we'll stop to study up on the main characters in the Nativity story. I'm recycling my Nativity Devotions from last year, with a few tiny tweaks. I printed off a few pictures to add to the path, and then colored them myself. I'm not one of those people who has bought into the "adult coloring" craze. With good reason. It took me forever to color these. This one is my favorite. Haha. And then, I threw on a few verses to fill the blank spaces on our calendar. Here are this year's activities: (we do them in co...

Christmas week! My favorite week of the year!!! 1. We failed on our Advent Activities. We made cookies from a store-bought mix for the mail lady on Monday, but that was it for the week. On Tuesday, we made play-doh with the intent of putting it in cute Mason jars and delivering it to some of our friends. This was my inspiration: But I couldn't find any little Mason jars and the girls were having so much fun playing with the play-doh that we decided to forget the snowmen and just keep the play-doh for ourselves. Lol. #momfail 2. I've mentioned before that Lucy is obsessed with YouTube. She has a couple daily "vloggers" that she follows faithfully, and while I've watched lots of the episodes with her and have the safe search on, I'm still a little bit uneasy about her watching these adult-made videos. They're family-friendly, have little kids, and are usually just boring or dumb, but I still feel like she doesn't need to be watching such ...

Sorry for the delay. It's that busy time of year! (And I love it!) 1. Advent recap: On Sunday, the girls got to open their special ornament from us. I ended up getting them both the same one this year: I try to do something that characterizes what they were into that year. They both love  helping me in the kitchen, and they always wear their aprons, so I thought this was perfect. Monday was snow paint (shaving cream and glue). We got out some googly eyes and raisins to decorate our snowmen. Here's Lucy's: Here's Lena's: Lol. On Tuesday, we made " snowman soup " for the librarians: And of course, we had to have our own when we got home: Lucy took a couple sips. Lena guzzled all of hers! We skipped Wednesday, made Grandma gifts on Thursday, then hit up the gardens on Friday: 2. You know the saying, "It's no use crying over spilled milk?" Well there was some crying this week. Lucy loves to watch YouTube videos o...

1. We did better on our advent activities this week. On Sunday, we got our Christmas tree. It's our best tree ever and I love it. The girls love it too. This is their new breakfast spot: On Monday, I took them each to Family Dollar separately so they could choose a gift for each other. Lena spent $6 on Lucy. Lucy spent $12.50 on Lena. Haha. Fortunately, they're too young to understand or care. Tuesday was supposed to be cinnamon ornament day, but we didn't have any applesauce and I did not want to drive all the way to Meijer to get some, so we skipped it. On Wednesday, we went back to Family Dollar and I let the girls pick out a couple toys for Toys for Tots. And on Thursday, we made these adorable minion ornaments: I found a picture on Pinterest, but it didn't give any instructions, so we winged it. I got some clear glass ornaments and we filled them liberally with yellow paint, then swirled it all around until they were well coated. Originally, I taped off...

I posted in my Advent entry that we're doing something new this year: Nativity Devotions. Every few days, my girls put a new piece of the manger scene into the stable. We read the corresponding Bible story and talk about them as we go. Because I think better through writing than by winging it, I wrote myself up an outline for each day. And because I'm awesome (and humble), I'm sharing it with all of you. ;-) We're doing most of our reading passages from the Jesus Storybook Bible * because it's so much more kid friendly. JSB doesn't have a section on Joseph, so I read it out of the Bible (with a tiny bit of censoring. I'm not sure how appropriate that is, but my kids are 5 and 2. I wasn't prepared to discuss "public disgrace," divorce, and " consummation " with them.) The questions are largely geared toward Lucy. And some parts of the outline are pretty specific to our family, but hopefully you'll still find it helpful. :-) ...

1. I've already kind of failed on the Advent Activities. Every year, I try hard to make the activities simple and arrange them on our calendar based on what else we have going that day. I knew Wednesday was going to be crazy busy, so I had that night be "Christmas pizzas" since I knew we were going to have to eat dinner despite the craziness. I underestimated the amount of busyness though and ended up picking up pizza instead of making it ourselves. Still pizza night, right? Haha. And then last night was supposed to be Family Game Night, but I was feeling terrible, the girls were playing so nicely together, Lucy forgot to check the day's activity and I purposely didn't remind her. Oops. We did  do our two day's of Nativity Devotions, though. They've been going well and the girls are excited to see who we're going to add to the Nativity Set each time. I've only written out the first three days, though, so I need to get to work on the rest. I have a ...