12 Days of Christmas, Day 1&2 plus a little FHE

Look what a great job you did Mom?
Notice her sweet hair, again.
It was done nice and pretty, I PROMISE!!!




Grace playing pickaboo

Diligently coloring his tree.
I'm sure the day will come, and soon, when
he will no longer want to participate in
such childish activities.

Side Note:
I found out today that the kids in his class no longer call their cubbies, cubbies, but "lockers"
Cubbies is now too childish of a term.
All righty then.

It fun to watch them each color their trees and see how different they turn out.

My sweet Isabel.
Just take a deep breath.



My 12 days of Christmas
Wall of Envelopes.

Hannah's wrapping and inscription to Grace.


My kids with their finished products.
This photo shows each of my children's personalities to a T!!!

Since I don't have enough traditions for my kids I've decided to start a few more this year. Why not add to the Joy and Pleasure of the season with more work for me!!! Yay!!! I do it for the kids.
This was originally suppose to be an advent type of adventure for my children. But the first day of December came to quickly and I couldn't come up with 25 different activities to do. So it evolved into the 12 days of Christmas. Each envelope is filled with a small treat and a note revealing the exciting event for that day. Yesterday, of course, was the first day. We didn't do much but wrap a present for my niece Alleah. It just happens to be her birthday. So I'm thinking that from here on out our first day of Christmas will involve Alleah. Which will be great for my kids. And being that it was a super crazy busy week, not all the envelopes were filled yesterday either. I left that for today.

Day 2:
Wrapping Presents for Siblings and playing Darts with Dad

You know how you envision a specific activity with your dear children and it never quite seems to pan out how you hope? Ya, that's how tonight went. I hope this isn't a foreshadowing of future events. The kids were thrilled with the activity. On Saturday we let them all buy gifts for each other. In typical Brent fashion the one small gift turned into 2. What ever, just let the husband have his way with the Holiday Spirit.

Jaren and Isabel were first. You know there's that time in every child's life when they want to just do everything on their own. But as you watch them, knots begin to build in your stomach and it takes everything in you to not jump across the room to rescue them, and the suffering item but you know you can't because if you do the wrath of that child will come hurtling in your direction? Isabel wasn't quite sure what to do with all the paper we cut for her package. She eventually ripped a huge hole in it and as a result her frustration also mounted. Trying to keep a level head I asked if I could help her. Well it ended up, in her humble opinion, that I was doing everything and she was doing nothing and it was ,"SO BORING". Isabel's new phrase for EVERTHING that isn't going her way. Jaren just about stomped out of the room for things that I wasn't even saying. We managed to make it through the first round.

Round II, Hannah and Annika plus Beckham.

This was a much easier round. Except for the fact that Hannah had just one package to wrap and she quickly became bored and was not expecting this whole wrapping business to be as uneventful. She begged Annika to wrap something and finally was content to at least write To and From on one of the already wrapped packages. Oh the agony of it all.

Neither I or the children thought that wrapping so few presents would be so labor intensive. In the end I think they were happy with the results. It was exciting for them to look at all the wrapped presents. They begged to have them placed under the tree. My immediate and permanent response was NO!! Not with over zealous children, a toddler, a munching cat and chomping dog. There's no way those presents would make it to Christmas day. So, for now, they will get tucked away in my "secret" hiding place.

And what happened to the game of darts? It started out well, the board was hung with care and the darts thrown with much zeal. But it quickly became to challenging for the children and too frustrating for the Dad. So the children watched a show while Dad played the wii.

The end.