Holiday Prep 2011

We love Christmas around here. We love the music. We love the LIGHTS! And we have had our fair share of doing super fun things to get us in the holiday spirit.

Wyeth's birthday was the 3rd. We celebrated well. Then on thte 4th we got the tree. And the lights went on the house! We decorated that weekend. We love our stockings. Our little lit houses and our nativity creche.

We have established some great traditions around here. The first is that the kids get a holiday themed book every night to open starting December 4th. Sam picks these up for about .25 or .50 cents throughout the  year. It is great to read a holiday story each night.  We also have four advent calendars this year! The problem is that we are always behind! I never knew a family that couldn't focus on doing the advent calendars! We have our two 'usual' ones but this year we also recieved two more! Four calendars is a lot! Not surprisingly, the one with chocolate is always opened first!

We did several events this year that were new. They included:

A holiday event that had cupcakes and a horse drawn carriage. Pure fun! The kids loved the clipity clop noise. And the ride was long which was great!   We saw Santa that night and Wyeth didn't flip out. Much. Score!

We also went to Washington Crossing to try to see Washington Cross the Delaware. They do this on Christmas day but they do a 'dress rehersal' earlier in the month. The water was too high and we didn't actually cross the river. But we had fun pretending! Seren insisted on bringing her doll too. In the doll stroller. "Fun" trying to see colonial houses with a doll stroller! OY!

That night we sang Christmas carols and saw Santa.It was great to sing carols in the cold night. That was one of my favorite actitivities.

And some old traditions too.
We went out with my Mom and Dad to see some holiday light show. We also went out to dinner which was a really nice treat!

This past Satruday, we made homemade cookies. Which was really a disaster. Not the mess. The fighting. Ridiculous! At one point, we all 'took five'. We went to our seperate parts of the house and just sat down and did our own thing. That seemed to help a ton. Once refreshed, we started again.

The following day we went to Philly to see the John Wanamaker Light show. Pure nostalgia for me. I went every year as a kid and saw the exact same lights. Awesome. We also tried out the train display at Reading Terminal Market. The kids LOVED pushing the buttons and making the trains  'move'.  We aimed low that day. After the cookie making experience the day before, we wanted to set our sights low. Glad we did. Wyeth picked out a cookie to eat and then promptly decided that was NOT the cookie he wanted. A full on HUGE meltdown ensued!! It was so sad to see him so beside himself. It was one of those public tantrums that builds and builds. We (sam) had to hold him crying his eyes out down the cold city streets of Philly. Horrible.

Enjoying the lights:

After nap, we delievered Christmas cookies to our neighbors. This is an annual tradition as well. And a great one! We have a lot of older neighbors. The kids loved running from door to door and saying Merry Christmas. Seren had a 'list' which was so sweet. After we visited each neighbor, she would cross off the name. (Her mother's daughter!). Wyeth just focused on running. That and asking when he would get to eat MORE cookies.

We have one more holiday fun event which is a live nativity. That is tonight. We shall see!

And now we are coasting! Nearly everything has been wrapped. The cards aren't quite done but mostly done. I hope to 'finish' tonight so that the next three nights can be focused on sitting in front of the tree, relaxing and drinking wine.