Last day of St. Patricks Day fun

The kids LOVED the clovers yesterday.  Once Millicent got started she wanted to do more and more.  She sat coloring the filters and spraying them long after we had moved on.  These can be done for any occasion using any colors. 

The beards were fun too.  Even Millicent could tie them on.  (The perfectionist in her rose up and she ended up untying them ALL because they were uneven and only doing back a few.)  This could also be done at any time with any colors.

While I was taking pictures of the girls this morning Asa wanted me to take a picture of his bowl of oatmeal.  ????

And just because she's cute not because she asked. 

Last days activities.  But if you feel like you didn't get enough done on Wednesday, pick a few to do today or tomorrow to have more fun.

Monday's
Tuesday's
Wednesday's
Thursday's

• Paper shamrock at Under the table and Dreaming
• Hunt for gold coins at Jesse Kate 
• Or have them find the gold coins in the trap like the Leprechaun lost them 
• Mint shake
• 2 cups milk
• 1 banana
• 1/2 C mint ice cream
• little green food coloring to make it nice and green

More St. Patricks Week Fun

Oh boy.  Did the kids ever have fun with the rice projects yesterday.  SO MUCH FUN!  Millicent's technique was to put all the rice on her rainbow and hope it would stick.  Asa's was to pour the rice out repeatedly and then scream at me to make more.

• Coffee filter clovers found at Under the Table and Dreaming
• Leprechaun beards found at French Knots
• Rainbow of fruit found at Someday Crafts
• Today's assignment:
• Put on a play
• Sell something to dad with advertising....he must want it
• sing a song using sign language (which you do not already know the signs to)
• Earn sewing kits (for girls) and a car (for boy)

St. Patricks Day. Can I pinch you?

wordswarp.com

St. Patrick's week is so much fun.  

Day one

Day two

The punch was delicious but I only used about half the ingredients.  We considered it dessert.  I think I'll make the rest for church tonight.

The girls were able to stump Jeff with their questions.  Let's see how many you know...NO CHEATING.

1.  How tall was Goliath in feet?

2.  What happened to King Belshazzar right after he saw the writing on the wall?

3. How was Jezebel killed?

4.  What was the 19th book of the Bible?

5.  What was the 30th book of the Bible?

And Mill's:

1. Who was baby Jesus' mother and father?

2.  How big was Elijah with feet?

Today's treat is a pot of gold...jello, that is. You can find instructions and recipe on Family Fun. It's easy though.

We will finger paint a shamrock found at Under the Table and Dreaming.

Unfortunately yesterday I had a little stir craziness myself and HAD to get our of the hosue and HAD to get my haircut and a pedicure and a lunch with my daughter.  Had to, people.  So we didn't do our craft.  We'll be crafting up a storm today.

Our assignments today are:

Write a story.  One person will start until I say stop and then the next person will write until I say stop and so  on. Even Mill will participate in this.

Come up with a magic trick that dad cannot figure out, each.

Write a haiku each.

All for Andes candies.  I was going to do Peppermint patties.  But the Andies are wrapped in green.

Then, and boy is this fun, the Leprechaun is going to strike again.  (I found this on Gourmet Mom on-the-Go.)  I will prepare lunch and they will get an Andies mint with their lunch. Only there will be little bites taken out of it.  And little green foot prints. Be sure and check out Gourmet Mom's blog to see how cute this is.  It will be so much fun.   

What are your plans for today?

  

St. Patrick's Day fun...day two

 kidscookingactivities.com

The green cereal was a hit, just like I predicted.  But it was touch and go at first.

When I poured the milk in the older girls bowls they started giggling. When I poured it in Millicent's, she started crying. She got very upset.  UNTIL I whispered that it was a pretend leprechaun but not to tell the girls.  Then it was great fun to think about him all day long.  She called him a little man.

The girls really had fun with their stories.  I was a bit surprised.  Kori's was about the Hobbit, because she just finished reading it.

Our leprechaun trap was a little harder than I predicted and we are still working on it. 

Here are the poems they wrote.

Millicent:

Leprechaun makes cereal green
Leprechaun it is funny
It is St. Patrick's day
The little man makes stuff green

Kati:

Green is yummy
Green is cool
Green is sitting in a pool
Green is silly
Green is slinky
And also stinky
Green is sitting on my pinky
Green is so cool
Just like cooling in the pool

Kori:

Myths
Unicorns, dragons, Leprechauns-
Wait a minute Leprechauns?!
Leprechauns are real,
They're not fairy tales.
They're tiny old men,
of course,
But they're not fairy tales!

Today's activities:

We'll have green punch.  Easy recipe.

A container of green sherbet
2 liters of Ginger ale
can of frozen lemonade (going to try that in small doses for the right taste)
can of pineapple

Stir together and serve chilled.

The crafts are rainbow and shamrock rice found at Under the Table and Dreaming.  Everyone will LOVE this!

For their assignment they will:

Try to stump dad with Bible questions...he can only get 2 out of 5 right for them to move on.

Then he will tell them to memorize a verse, every other word, and Mill has to know at least two words.

Last they will put on a skit of their making.

All to win a headband each.

It's Saint Patrick's Week...Join me.

Photo from last year

You know what I just read on another blog? You are suppose to do your holiday posts BEFORE the holiday.  Who would have thunk it?  Not I, said the fly.  I do them the week they are going on.  So this is St. Patty's week and do I have some fun stuff in store for my kids!

We start off with our shamrocks. I posted last year about our lucky/blessed shamrocks.  I printed off the Lucky sheet and the shamrocks from JesseKate Designs.

She's got a whole week of activities over there.  Just scroll down past the comments and click Newer.  YOu can see all she had planned last year.  Where are this years activities??? 

Today they will find their cereal already poured.  They will add milk and, what??  Green milk.  The trick is to put the green food coloring in the bowl, under the cereal and it's a big surprise. My kids love this stuff, and your kids will too.  We are going with rice krispies...a neutral color.

Their craft for today is a Leprechaun book where they fill in some of the words, making an adventure.  Truly the smaller kids will enjoy this more. 

You can find this book at Let's Explore.  It's all ready to print for you.

See, all these other people, they had this stuff ready to go on their blogs.  Making my search for fun activities quite a bit easier.  Thanks pals.

The second activity, more for the bigger girls, is to make a Leprechaun trap.  Oh yea, this should be fun.  I'm going to tease them all the time about a tiny little legrechaun running around causing havoc, like making their milk green.  We do this with a monkey in the flag pole.  Wait a minute. That's sounds naughty.  Trust me, it's not. It's just a joke.  So hopefully no one believes me.

You can find the instructions for this trap over at Family Fun. 

The assignment today is:

Write a poem about the color green.

Tell the poem to dad and he will tell them to make up a dance.

Present the dance to the family and win your reward.

Today's reward is green T shirt.

Merry Christmas Eve

Advent activity:

Make a cake for Jesus' birthday

I have to say that I probably wont. IT'S COLD HERE SISTER. It's snowing and we don't have the warmest house...so I think I'll sit on the couch and stay covered up.

When you get a minute I encourage you to go read this post about Christ's birth. It is absolutely amazing.

Randomness:

Went the chiropractor yesterday. I waddled in. I could barely walk. I mean, I was taking tiny baby steps and they hurt so bad. It was mostly my sacrum. After I got adjusted, I felt wonderful. Like I wasn't even pregnant. Now if I could just afford to go every day.

Survivor Spoiler alert:

First I'd like to direct your attention to my original Survivor post. I did say Russell and Brett would make it to the final four...and I called Russell as the winner. (Which by all rights he is. So I was really right, even if I was wrong. Because he deserved to win like nothing I've ever seen before.) Then after watching the first episode I called Mick. Yep, I called the winner without having watched a single second. And stop saying that...Russell IS the winner.

I finally watched to see who won last night. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN???

Russell dominated the ENTIRE show. He masterminded every coup. He found three immunity idols with no clues.

Since when does riding coattails justify winning a million dollars? People have tried that tact for seasons and NEVER won.

Come on sore losers. You KNOW the reason you voted for Natalie is because you are mad at Russell for playing you.

Now, admittedly, I have NOT seen the reunion show. I have no idea the real reasons for voting for HER. In my books, there is no reason. Russell was the master of this season, hands down.

I'm so mad at Survivor that I never want to watch again.

Until next season.

Merry Christmas friends.

Advent - Christmas Eve Eve

Today's Advent:

Make a birthday banner

We've never done this for Christmas before...but we made a banner for Jeff when he returned from Korea and it was so fun. I thought everyone might enjoy doing it again. For the record, we got one of those HUGE paper rolls from the newspaper office for about $2 and it lasts forever. It's perfect for these kinds of crafts.

Christmas Eve Eve here has some significance. We buy three family gifts (as well as three gifts per person). On Christmas Eve Eve we open the first family gift, the second the next evening and the big family gift on Christmas morning.

Now on to my pregnancy ails:

MY BACK HURTS. SO MUCH! And remember how I was bragging about how great I was sleeping...and some of you said, enjoy it while you can. Okay, nobody said that but I know you were thinking it. It's over. I'm waking up every. single. hour. all. night. long. Feel my angst.

The baby is so amazingly low I don't know how it's not falling out. For me, I have a big old basketball stomach all right out in front. Now the top part of my stomach is flat...okay, so that's a major exaggeration, maybe flat isn't the right word here, less round, maybe. You can't even feel the baby at the top part of my stomach anymore.

Hey, did I tell you my back hurts? I'm going to the chiropractor as soon as it opens.

Here is a weird thing I found out yesterday.

I conceived this baby two years, to the day, I conceived Asa...that's not the weird thing, I already knew that. However, I conceived Mill two weeks before them (and some years). But what I discovered is that my mucus plug started coming out with Millicent exactly as far along as I was with Asa. Then about ten days later I went into labor with her. We knew Asa was early (he was induced due to preeclampsia), and now we think he was probably two weeks early. SO, if we follow the same pattern, this baby will be born in about three weeks and some days.

If I know, maybe I wont be so anxious.

What about you? Have any of you had similar labors like that? Or am I hoping for too much?

One more thing...my back hurts.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve

(And no, I haven't watched the Survivor finale but I'm watching it tonight.)

Advent - 3 Days until Christmas

Elf from New Line Cinema

Today's Advent activity:

Watch Christmas movies all day

Self explanatory, of course. What we do all Advent season is unwrap a Christmas movie about once or twice a week, as time allows. However, this season, we've been so busy we've only unwrapped one. Guess we'll be catching up today.

We did quite a bit of baking yesterday...except we didn't actually bake anything. Everything was a no bake recipe.

I've been asked what Turtle poop is. Well, it was an accident.

We had a recipe:

Chocolate bars like Almond Joy and Reece's

Almond bark

Place candy in blender. Roll them into small balls and dip in almond bark.

That didn't work out quite like we expected. Could have been because it was too hard to set up. Don't know. It was a huge messy mess.

But as we tried with all our might to make something out of it, we just started calling it turtle poop. Easy to make. Yummy to eat. Fun name.

Advent - Only 4 days till Christmas, and update

Today's advent activity:

All day baking fest

As you can imagine, this is everyone's favorite activity. When you ask the girls, especially Kati, what they love about Advent, they say baking day. That is because they get to try the food as we go.

We have our standards:

no bake cookies
fudge
peanut brittle

But every year we try a few new things:

mints
turtle poop
peanut butter balls

We'll see what we come up with this year.

When we are done, we pass almost everything on to friends.

Now for a few updates.

Helen, I have NOT seen last nights episode of Survivor. Last night was the children's play at church and I was the director...and of course, my children were in it. So while I had planned to have a party at a friends house and watch the finale, it didn't turn out that way. BOO! So I haven't seen it. NO ONE tell me anything. I can't even go onto Yahoo for fear of seeing the results.

Saturday I had some good, consistent contractions and got hopeful I could be starting labor. But no, they stopped. The race is on though. Now I'm starting to watch the patterns of the contractions in anticipation.

I'm wonderfully uncomfortable. I don't think I've ever been so uncomfortable. My back aches, every position I lay in at night hurts, and I have round ligament pain in my sides when I sleep. However, I don't have any constipation, hemorrhoids or leg cramps. So I guess it's not that bad. I'm just ready to meet my baby.

As an incentive to not get too crazy with anticipation my blessing way is Saturday. You can have a shower with a baby (which I don't like doing) but you can't have a blessing way with one. It centers around the mom and the labor and the baby. There are prayers for the mom to be, prayers when the labor starts and well, blessings. So you need the baby inside. And really I want to wait until after Christmas to have the baby.

My husband got a pogo stick for Christmas, as did the kids. And he played so long and so hard on it, that he bent the stick and hurt his back. PLEASE pray that he will be fine when the baby comes. Another really great reason to not go into labor yet. He does EVERYTHING after the baby comes and just lets me hold and snuggle and nurse my baby. If his back hurts, I don't know what we'll do.

I'm excited about Christmas. How about you?

Advent - 7 Days left

My readers are sweet...or really stupid. Okay, sweet. Yesterday I had the number of days until Advent wrong and nobody said anything...nobody wanted to make me feel stupid, right? You guys are sweet.

Today's advent activity:

Picnic in the living room

I'm not sure why the kids think this is so special. We do occasionally eat pizza in the living room for movie night, so it's not like they've never done it. But they like it, so we continue it.

I have well over half my presents wrapped and ready to go. So yes, I was criticizing you yesterday and I wasn't done myself. It's my blog, I can do that.

Our awards night did not go quite as planned. We organize it in such a way that we anticipate everyone will get an award. And so far, every year, each person has gotten more than one award. It's never happened that someone has not gotten one. But this year we had lots of ties. Could be because Millicent's method of voting had a lot less to do with who actually deserved the award and more to do with whose lap she was sitting on...and using that persons name until we told her she couldn't anymore. Just sayin'.

You are only aloud to vote for each person three times. So what ends up happening is that you have some throw away votes. Meaning, when you get to the cleanest teeth, you may only have two people to choose from, neither of whom regularly brush their teeth. But you have to use the vote that you have left. So sometimes the best artist doesn't get the best artist award. But the person who does win, still feels good because they don't know that they got three throw away votes. They just think they are really good at art.

We had to devise it this way because we have a child who really isn't very good at anything: good attitude, clean room, clean clothes...none of them.

Maybe next year I'll start a new category just for this child: biggest frown, person who can make everyone upset the quickest, least likely to help out, loudest cry. There you go. Now that person can win something next year.

Okay, so I'm (mostly) kidding. (About those awards.) But not about how hard it is to vote for one particular person in our family who is mostly a sour puss. But you know what, we sure had a good laugh (at her expense). Okay, well not exactly at....I said her, but what I really meant was that person....that persons expense, because that person didn't realize we were laughing at them.

My hope is always that someone will get seriously pumped about winning some awards and start bathing every day. But no one does.

I'm not going to tell who won what because that would give away who didn't win anything.

If you decide to do an award night in your home, give me the list of awards and prizes so maybe I can add to mine next year. And if you figure out a foolproof method to ensure that even the sour pusses get an award, please let me know.

Advent - ONLY 8 days to go!!

Are all your presents bought and wrapped? You are running out of time. Naughty, naughty!

Today's advent activity:

Family Award night

OH, how we love family award night. Last years winners can be seen here.

Basically, I come up with a list of awards, enough so that I know everyone will be able to get something.

Funniest
Most thoughtful
Best dressed
Cleanest
Best manners
Best chef (Hey, even I get one.)

You get it.

I read all the awards, so everyone knows what to choose from. We give everyone each persons name three times...so they can only vote for that person three times. (We have to make it somewhat fair...otherwise we have a child who may not get any.)

If you win the vote you get a reward.

Some rewards:

Go to Mimi's
Stay up 30 minutes late
Pick a video from the video store
Extra dessert
New pair of socks

It's really fun. And it encourages the children to be really good, for a few weeks, at least.

Today's Blessing jar:

Make a meal

They had a ball with this one yesterday. Kati literally listed everything in the kitchen, whether she had the ability to make it or not. Finally, Kori decided she could heat some beans in the microwave and some leftover green beans with some toast. They loved it.

Advent - 9 Days until Christmas

Ah, yes, is that not the most precious picture you've ever seen? I LOVE it. One of my all time favorites of Jeff and Asa...and I have a lot. (Thanks, Hannah.)

Anywho...

Lest you think I'm some super organized, fantastic mom who always remembers to do everything and gets everything done in a day. I have no Advent activity for the day. TRUE!

See, when I was making the cards out I thought I had one too many. SO I took it out. Today when I went to see what today's activity is it was the wrong day. Today's card is actually tomorrow's. Oh well. We'll use today to catch up on things we didn't finish on other days.

Blessing Jar

Make place cards for everyone

Since my due date is rapidly coming around I hope no one minds if I give updates whenever I feel like it...being that it's my blog and my baby and my pregnancy and I'm pretty much uncomfortable all of the time and someone needs to feel my pain with me and tell me they know just how I feel.

Yesterday I finished my Christmas shopping and the wheelchairs were looking mighty good to me. Seriously. Stop laughing. I'm NOT joking. I really considered getting one.

About half way through...okay, who am I kidding....while I was still in the toy department with about two things in my basket, I texted Ashlea and told her I should have brought her. (I couldn't bring her though because I still had gifts to get her.) She told me she knew. (Teenagers, they DO know everything, I guess.) But reminded me that she could come back with me the next day and not to overdue it.

Too late. I already had. Yes, I'm that pregnant.

So I finished Christmas shopping and got ONLY the essentials we would need for food today. (Giveaway that I was in Walmart, huh? No choice, I live in Smallville, America.) I was so sore. My BACK. Oh my goodness. How can one's back hurt as bad as mine does. I HAVE to go to the chiropractor today. My back, very low, right in the middle, at the tailbone, feels like someone has hit it over and over with a hammer. OH MY GOODNESS. Seriously! It hurts.

I text my sweet daughter to complain again, because she's feeling my angst and commiserating with me. I tell her I honestly don't know how I'm going to get the stuff out to the car. She tells me to ask for help.

Okay, anyone who knows me KNOWS I will NOT ever ask for help. The house has to be on fire. Someone has to be dead in front of me. The car has to have flipped over twelve times. You get me. I don't ask for help.

This should tell you how bad I hurt last night.

I asked for help. From a perfect stranger.

After standing in line about ten minutes...TEN MINUTES...Walmart can you get some more cashiers??? I began putting the things I could reach onto the belt. Then as the cashier was freed up I told him that I needed some help. Could I just leave the heavier stuff in the cart and let him ring it up? I told him that my back was just killing me and that I was really sorry to have to ask but I just didn't think I could do it. Yes, I went on and on and on just like that. I couldn't help myself.

He told me it was no problem at all and that HIS wife was pregnant and due in a few weeks and knew just how I feel. So he rang up everything in my cart and stacked the groceries in there for me.

Then as I was walking out, wondering if I could even make it to the car, much less put the stuff into it, the lady who checks the receipts asked if I needed help. I could have fallen over. I said yes, please, please. (Asking for help once is my quota. I wasn't about to ask again.)

So she called someone over to carry my groceries out. Even though it was cold, and I felt bad that he was loading my stuff, I told him I was going to get in the van.

Okay, well that's not exactly true. I asked him twice if that was okay. Hey, I'm NOT good about asking for help or accepting it.

He tells me of course and that he knows exactly how I feel because his girlfriend is due any day now too. NO WAY! Two nice guys with preggos at home. What are the chances? That was my gift from Jesus for Christmas.

Then I soaked in the tub for an hour.

Advent - 10 Days until Christmas

Today's activity:

Make place mats for grandparents

We get the long pieces of construction paper and let the kids decorate however they want. Usually they end up with their handprints along with their pictures. Which is great. Then we laminate it and give to whichever grandparent is on their mind that particular day.

Blessing Jar:

Make someone's bed

I was remiss in posting my blessing jar activities. AND I'm saddened that my children aren't doing them nearly enough. I've got to get their focus off themselves and on to each other. Does anyone have a suggestion? I thought everyone would be pumped to serve their family in these fun ways, but I'm just not seeing it.

Stay tuned...I'm posting my maternity photos from my professional shoot two weeks ago.

Advent - 11 Days until Christmas

I'm such a bad blogger...I said I would remember to put up all the weeks Advent activities, even on Sunday, in case you are following along, and of course I forgot. Oh well. Still love me?

Saturday was:

Look at lights in Chickasha

I'm sure a nearby town has a festival of lights. You know what I mean. You wait in line for an hour and a half and then it takes ten minutes to drive through. But hey, it's a tradition, and the lights are really good. The kids enjoyed it. Asa was practically climbing out the window. HE LOVED it. Next year, we will walk. It will make it last longer and it will be more fun.

Sunday was:

Wear red and green

Not pink and purple, or white and blue, but red and green. Just thought I'd explain that to you. You know, Christmas colors and all.

Today:

Live nativity scene

The Jingle Bell dance is fun, but honestly this one can be quite boring. HOWEVER, I feel like it's important to remember the reason we are celebrating (even if Jesus wasn't actually born in December). Don't tell Jeff, but tonight he's going to be the donkey and I'm going to be Mary. That will liven it up.

Yesterday Kori sang an amazing song at church. As soon as I figure out how to get it off my video camera I will post it to my blog.

Most of the day I was having pretty painful back labor. This was not like regular labor or BH contractions. This HURT. So I'm pretty sore today and hoping it doesn't start up again. The baby is engaged, but I guess it could be the wrong direction and that's what all that action was. I'll keep you updated.

How are things at your place?

Advent - 14 Days left

Today's activity:

Game night

Don't you love game night? Every year I buy the kids three gifts and three family gifts. One of the family gifts is a game...so you can imagine we have a LOT of games. Usually we have three or four that are our favorites. One we really like, but can hardly play, is Boggle. It's fun for everyone and educational. The reason we seldom play it is because, ALWAYS when you have little ones, they really want to shake it up. And shake it up. And shake it up. And they don't care if the timer is going while you are trying to find words. They'll just sit there on your lap crying until they can shake it up again. Fortunately, we have other games to play.

Unfortunately, tonight we are going out to eat to celebrate Jeff's work accomplishment.

Fortunately, we can take Would you Rather?

Unfortunately, that is NOT my favorite game.

Fortunately, everyone loves it.

Unfortunately, the games I like are best played at the table.

Yea, this could go on all day.

Today's blessing jar:

Tell someone what is unique and special about them.

Doesn't that sound nice? I cant wait to hear these.

Our kitchen looks like a winter wonderland. Jeff is usually a scrooge about decorating the kitchen...one year he wouldn't even LET US! Really! It doesn't matter the reason...just because we had our house for sale does not matter.

Anyway, he came home yesterday and hung up paper chains and snow flakes from the ceiling and archways. It's beautiful and it makes me smile. I LOVE IT. It's almost like Buddy, the Elf, came over and decorated for us.

We didn't do any crafts yesterday but I intend to do some today. Anyone do any yesterday? Do tell!

And don't forget to vote in my poll over there on the left. I really do care about your opinion. I've been getting a minimum of two spam emails every single day. While it is annoying to have to delete them I don't want to make visiting my blog annoying for you. Nor do I want to keep you from commenting...I live for your comments. So tell me what you think!

Advent - 15 days left till Christmas

Today's activity:

Crafts

We usually do salt dough and make handprints for everyone and then paint them. Since my tree is pretty much a decoration for the kids I enjoy hanging their creations on it.

I also try to buy a few little things to make as well as scour the internet for creative options.

I really don't have much planned today. Family Fun magazine had some little toy soldiers to make from toilet paper holders so we'll probably do those. Other than that, I'm out of ideas. So please, if you have any EASY, I mean, EASY ideas for crafts, please share. We like to give them away too.

Also everyone draws a secret name (within just our family) and we make a gift for them. So today is a good day for someone to figure out they can make their secret person something.

Blessing Jar

Read to someone younger

The older girls do this about half the time...but that's not quite enough. Yesterday everyone willingly and quickly read to the little ones. They got read to a lot. They LOVED it.

Advent - 16 days until Christmas

Today's activity:

Do something nice for the pastor and his family, and your Sunday school teacher.

We do this one for the pastor's family every year. This year has been especially difficult on his family so we are really going to try to do something nice. In years past he still had children at home, and now all but one are at college. We've done simple things. Each of us would take a family member (or pair up) and get them their meals and drinks and take their trash. There aren't enough of them left this year....

so....

I added the Sunday school teacher to the list. I actually really like this. We'll see what everyone comes up with. We ARE Sunday school teachers, so Jeff and I won't have anyone to serve besides the pastor's family.

Please offer ideas if you have any. We like simple gestures that can easily be done tonight at church. Just to let them know we love them and how important they are to us.

Yesterday for the blessing box we drew out:

Let someone play with your toys.

Can you believe no one did this? The little ones ALWAYS share, but the big ones aren't so great. We gotta work harder at this!

Advent - 17 Days until Christmas

picture from Webundies.com

Today's Advent activity:

Pajama Day

Okay, for all of you who have been making fun of me...no food today. See, sometimes I'm not ruled by my massive stomach. Sometimes I think of something else. Never you mind that I have a purse full of candy from the movies tonight...cause I'm not sharing it.

Pajama day is a serious favorite around here. Honestly, about half of us are in our pj's all day anyway. The other half get dressed and have a routine. (If not, then teeth start turning black...YES, black, actually the color black...and hair never gets brushed. You get it...some kids need routine.) So the other half who get dressed every day, following our schedule, absolutely love this day.

Now me, every day is pajama day.

What about you? How is the Advent season going for you? I have to admit we are a little behind. We started our puzzle yesterday but we still haven't written our letters or made our phone calls. Today. I say today, we will.

We also started something this year called the Blessing Jar. I typed up a bunch of ways for us to serve each other and cut them out to put in a jar, that the girls decorated. (Very prettily, I might add.) Each day we are drawing out of the jar. Yesterday was ask someone how you can serve them and then proceed. Only one person did that yesterday and I was the lucky recipient. Yes, even I failed at asking. So we really need to try harder. The goal is that each time you bless someone with one of the tasks, we add a piece of straw to our "manger" (which at this point is nothing but will probably be a box just as soon as we get some straw from the barn that isn't stinky or wet or dirty....hey, it could happen.) and that the manger will be full of straw for baby Jesus on Christmas morning. Neat, huh? So do you think baby Jesus will make an appearance? Just kidding. It's not literal.

So back to you. Update me. How are things at your house this Advent season?

Oh yea, and Merry SITSmas. Don't know what SITS is? Better go visit. It's a fun way to get more comments and read new blogs. I'm all for more comments.

Advent - 18 days before Christmas

I forgot to post yesterday's Advent. PLEASE forgive me. I don't usually blog on Sunday because we stay pretty busy. So this Saturday I intend (you know, intend??) to put Sunday's activity up with Saturday's activity, which I'm also not used to posting.

Sunday's Advent

Call someone JUST to tell them you love them.

Sounds easy, but often times they think you've called for a reason. Your only reason is to say, "I love you. Bye." (Let us know how this goes.)

Today's Advent

Puzzle day

Just get out a bunch of puzzles and work on them all day and throughout Christmas. We usually set them up in the corner of a floor somewhere so we don't have to worry about moving them. Honestly, in all the years of doing Advent, we've never even come close to completing a puzzle.

We had a fun, Christmas filled weekend. Jeff wanted to know if we could do something July 4th ish today.

What about you? Is the holiday invading your time yet? I LOVE it.

Advent - 20 Days to go

Advent activity:

Watch a Christmas movie, eat pizza, popcorn, candy and soda

Tonight we watch our very favorite Christmas movie: Elf. Who doesn't love Elf, right? If you haven't seen it, tonight you should rent it, along with some pizza and soda and enjoy. It is utterly hilarious!!!!!

Today we also have a parade downtown and a free showing of Polar Express at the theater there. So a fun day, indeed.

We had a date (YES!) last night so we didn't do our scavenger hunt. Did anyone else? We'll do it today after we finish decorating the tree. Someone be sure to give me some clues, though, wouldya?