The Srader Family: December

I love the idea of daily Advent/Countdown to Christmas activities for the month of December. Maybe, one day, I will like the idea enough to actually get my act together in time to look at a calendar and plan crafts/outings/activities to do! That, of course, did not happen this year, but we did manage to haphazardly do a few things!

It was before December, but we shopped for and filled Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes
Family Christmas tree decorating
Denton Tree Lighting/WassilFest
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Reindeer Cookies (made with Nutter Butters, pretzels, M&Ms, mini chocolate chips, and almond bark)
Decorated Foam Christmas Tree from Target
Nativity "spelling cards"....printed on cardstock and used Scrabble letters to match/spell the words. We did this a grand total of one time!
VeggieTales Nativity Set to play with for the month. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Nick read the Christmas story from Luke and Rylan "acted it out" using this nativity set.
2 Veggietales Christmas Movies and CDs that were pretty much set on repeat at home and in the minivan
Made foam snowmen from Target, watched Frosty the Snowman and enjoyed a snowman treat (Powdered donuts and candy)
Opened daily advent calendar from Mardel. Read the scripture and ate the chocolate (which I still have a bag full of from all of the days that we missed)
Pictures with Santa at Poppa's work (this is the 3rd year for this one)
Walked around the neighborhood and looked at Christmas lights (This was sort of a last-minute-fill-time-before-daddy-gets-home idea, but I loved it! I couldn't believe how many decorations there were in our neighborhood. Hope to do this again next year, with Nick.)
Bought stickers to make/decorate Christmas cards - never made the cards
Visited Uncle Tommy, Aunt MaryAnn, Uncle Mark, Aunt Donna, and Mawmaw in Lubbock
Checked out Christmas books from the library and purchased a couple from Mardel to add to our collection. We read very few of these books!! Next year, I think I will get one out each evening at bedtime or something, instead of just having them out all the time.
Attended Christmas Eve service at DBC, followed by new matching pjs for the boys and making a "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake
Christmas morning we read the Christmas Story, opened gifts, ate breakfast, went to the Christmas Day service at DBC, ate lunch, decorated/ate birthday cake, napped, and enjoyed Christmas dinner with the Os

There were a few other things that I had hoped to do (Santa storytime, trains at Northpark, drive around and look at Christmas lights in our jammies with hot chocolate and cookies), but I enjoyed everything that we were able to do and I think the boys did too!