December is here

December is in full swing! I feel like it came suddenly out of nowhere. I don't know if it was the late thanksgiving or what. I found myself December 1st wrapping as many books as possible for our nightly Christmas book reading and planning advent activities. Its already such a busy time of year, I didn't want to make things more stressful, so some of our "activities" are events we already had planned on a particular day, some are fun crafts, and some are inexpensive surprises left in the stockings. That way I could see what days were already busy and plan something easy/fast for that day.

I found a kit to make this at the Deluxe Winter market. I've just written on slips of paper what the activity or event is for that day.

December 1st-
For the first day we had the annual Mitchell pizza/tree decorating night with Michael's family. 

The kids always get new pajamas. This year the theme was reindeer. Isabella was pumped to get some "footy pajamas like Benny".

Nana and the grandkids.

Izzy's face!!! :)

Ben got a new teething ring. He was a fan!

Izzy got a new little people manger set. She's been playing her "mangers" a lot since.
Its always a great night together with family! 

We've been opening a book every night and having a reading from an advent calendar we are doing.
Isabella really looks forward to it and asks me 5 times a day if she can open a book right now.

December 2nd:
Today's activity was to choose an animal from the world vision catalog to buy. We looked through all the animals and Izzy wanted to buy Ducks. So I read to her from the catalog how the Ducks would help the people in that country and we watched a video on the website about a family that is blessed through the world vision program. I'm not sure how much she understood...but I tried to explain how some people can't go to the store and buy food anytime they need it because they don't have stores like we do or money to buy food. Hopefully our 10 ducks are on their way to someone soon!

December 3rd:
Today we went to Lighting of the Commons at OC.

 There were free carriage rides!

Music and fireworks!

 Isabella is even more fun to experience this season with this year!! So fun!