Christmas 2015 Post 2 -- Christmas Countdown Calendar activities

This post is designed to showcase the things we did as a part of the Christmas Countdown Calendar. I didn't get pictures of every single thing we did, though, so it'll jut be a post of some of the things we did as a part of the calendar. The first thing is just that I wrapped 24 books so that the bigs could take turn opening a book, one each day leading up to Christmas. These were books we already had (except like two new ones I bought), so it wasn't really an expense and it was fun to see them be excited about a "new" book each day. Once wrapped, the books just sat on the hearth waiting to be opened. (In preparation for next year, I wrapped the books again before putting them up in the attic. I hope they come out alright!)

One of the first things was watching The Polar Express. I took the opportunity of captivated people to try out some different settings on the camera. None turned out very well, but that just serves as a reminder that I want to take a photography class! (hint, cough, hint)

This is the effect I was going for, but wish it was better.

One of the next things we did was go to Grapevine to watch the Holiday Lights Parade. I wish we hadn't. I was so excited to see the gorgeous floats they describe and picture on the website, but the floats were a major letdown. Like, here's the cheerleading team sitting on a platform with a string of lights around it. Plus, the parade is WAY too long. It's like 2.5 hours long til the end (Santa) and we cannot last that long. We didn't understand that we wouldn't have food around to buy so Seth walked a few blocks from our position and grabbed a Hot-n-Ready pizza which we ate while standing there. Additionally, it was packed-packed-packed. The parking was HARD. The stroller was nearly impossible. We won't be doing that again for like 10 years. yikes.

This basically never happens anymore and I had to get a picture of it.

Reading the Story of Christmas

I was SO excited to make gingerbread houses! I had never in my life done this and it always looked so fun. I bought this kit of a "gingerbread village" so that we would each have our own little house to assemble and decorate. The boys had a really good time doing this and I'll definitely buy something like that again! (We have decided that Christmas Craft will happen each year, but probably a different something each year. This will be repeated though, for sure.) My biggest tip for next time is to not use the piping bags the provide. Just put the icing in a baggie. Makes the squeezing way easier.

Graham did an awesome job, but the A-frame style did not hold
together well and so did not stick around very long.

The three remaining houses decorated this shelf for the rest of the month.

Mine above and Seth's below (I love the chimney he did!)

As usual, the boys' preschool had a night where the Tour of Lights donations benefit it, so we made a point to go through that night. It's such a quick and easy drive that we highly recommend it, whether or not you give a donation at the end. It seems they add to it each year, too, so it gets better and better each time we go!

This tree is one of my favorites of the whole thing and it's right at the beginning. 

There's something so magical about all that color!

Pretty much every time I go to Starbucks to get a coffee, the boys beg for a cake pop. I'm not sure that they had ever even had a cake pop and I'm certainly not going to spend the money on them each time I'm getting caffeine. So, as a part of The Calendar, I created a night where the only event was to go to Starbucks after dinner to get a cake pop and hot chocolate. It was a good event except they didn't like the taste of the cake pops so Seth ate them and Austin spilled his hot chocolate after like 2 sips and we were covered in it as was the floor. That was our cue to leave after only being there like 3 minutes. Oh well. I got some cute pictures first, though!

One of the other activities was a pizza and game night. The boys have really gotten into playing games and I couldn't be happier about that! I'm trying to reinforce that as much as I can. This activity wasn't exactly Christmas-y, but was one that we could easily do without much planning or work and in our pajamas.

Zingo!

As per our tradition, we baked cookies for our neighbors and the boys were way more help this year than in previous years. I made a joke that they are cheap labor and Seth corrected to say that they are actually the most expensive labor we could employ. ha!

I had swore off doing sugar cookies, but I was homesick and wanted to use my cutters and so I bought one package of that for us to do. The boys were great at putting the cutter into the dough, and totally understood that we needed to then transfer the cut out image to the pan, etc.

Carson is so easy going that he makes doing things possible/enjoyable.

After the sugar cookies we did the peanut butter cookies, some with the Hershey kiss and some with the forks across the top.

Then we did some snickerdoodles! MESSY but fun!!

Texas A&M represented well here. lol

The sun made this hard to see, but then we decorated the sugar cookies.

This was a good chance for me to let out my creative energy and I had a blast icing some cookies. We put the icing in baggies and "piped" it onto the cookie plus sprinkles.

Some looked better than others.

GA must have gotten too close to the decorators. 

The next day, we had all the cookies packaged and ready for delivery. It felt strange to be walking the street to deliver Christmas cookies when the weather was so mild, but nice for a change, I guess.

Pretty much his only grumpy face picture ever,
but it was really a tired face.
It cracks me up because it's so not him.

The last activity I got a picture of was another movie night (there are several throughout the month as there are several good Christmas movies I want my kids to have a part of their childhood experience). Dinner, jammies, movie, bed!