CtC - Day Nine: Take a Picture Every Hour

Day nine - photo mania!

So naturally this year is a big learning experience with this project as it is our first time doing it. Not surprisingly, there may be one or two activities that just don't work for our family for one reason or another. This was one of them. :) The kids are just too young for this one to be terribly effective - especially when it doesn't get opened until late morning too. But since they have naps/quiet time between 1:30 and 4/5pm, that's quite a few lost pictures. And with an 8pm bedtime - even more lost pictures! Plus there was the fact that we just had a hard time remembering to snap a shot!!

But we tried, and we did get a few pictures. So here they are!

9am Hour

10am Hour

11am Hour

12pm Hour

CtC - Day Eight: Watch a Holiday Movie and Eat Popcorn

Day 8 - time to sit on the couch, watch a holiday movie and munch some popcorn!

Normally my go-to choice for this would be A Charlie Brown Christmas, but that's got a whole activity of its own, so we made do with Rudolph's Shiny New Year. It's been a long long long time since I saw this one!

We popped up some popcorn, settled in on the couch and enjoyed our movie. :)

CtC - Day Seven: Take a Winter Walk

Day seven - walking in a winter wonderland!

Well...with the unusually mild December weather we've been having, we actually had to put this one off until we had a little bit of snow on the ground!! And that didn't happen until just a couple days ago!! Since we're also getting awfully close to Christmas, we had to get clever and jumped on the good fortune of combining this one with a stop at a particularly festive house on our Christmas lights drive (more details in a later post on that one).

There is a house over by Fermi Lab that really goes all out and not only decorates the front of their house, but the back as well! There is a nice little path set up to guide your tour. So we clambered out of the car, bundled up real good and took our little "winter walk" oo-ing and ah-ing at all the decorations this household had to offer. It was a quick walk, but it was winter and there was snow on the ground so it qualifies! :D

CtC - Day Six: See the Larsen House Lights

Day 6 was a drive out to Elburn to see a local favorite - the Larsen House!

Photo from the Kane County Chronicle

I should also mention that this was a day late since schedule conflicts prevented us from doing this on the day it was drawn, so we'll have to do double duty on Saturday to catch up. :) This one is a little tough to squeeze in since we don't want to get caught up in the crazy long lines that weekend traffic would bring plus we have to work around dinner/bath/bedtime schedules. Luckily things worked out Friday night and we were able to go check out the lights!

A little background info - this guy puts up a quarter million lights on his house out in the "country" and coordinates the light show to a music broadcast on a low frequency radio band. The entire show is at least 30 min long. It's pretty dang amazing, and I'm already a sucker for Christmas lights as it is. :)

We checked it out last year, and that was, well, a disaster. Between a 20 min drive and a long wait to get to a point where we could really see the light show, Caiden just melted down. It was NOT a pleasant experience.

This year we managed to somehow get there at a time that was less busy, and both boys were way more interested in the show this year! I didn't even need to break out my prepacked "waiting in the car" entertainment! In fact after sitting and watching for almost an hour, they were upset that we were leaving! Having cooperative kids made it a much more enjoyable experience this year.

Here is a little bit of video that Brian took of the show. Can you find the dancing/conducting Santa?

CtC - Day Five: Read a Holiday Story

Tonight we had a super easy activity - read a holiday story. I originally had intentions of going to the library and picking up some new books, but we ran out of time, so instead we made do with some old favorites.

I also realized that this activity would be a great candidate for a video recording (or two)! :) Now you can enjoy holiday story time with us too!

Reading a story with Dad

Some Christmas Caroling

CtC - Day Four: Have Breakfast for Dinner

Today's activity: breakfast for dinner! This one was a HUGE hit in our house! I don't think the boys have been this quiet and agreeable at dinner in a very long time. :)

When pondering what we should have, Brian came up with the brilliant idea that we should have French toast, scrambled eggs and bacon (well, bacon for the boys anyway :) ). We all worked together to make everything, and it was delicious!!

I think we need to make this a more regular thing in our house. :)

CtC - Day Three: Have a Cup of Hot Chocolate

Day 3's activity was enjoying a cup of hot chocolate! This was a first for Ezra today! Caiden has enjoyed hot chocolate before and specifically requested some marshmallows to go along in his cup. I do confess that I was a teensy bit bummed that this particular activity turned up today - when it was 65 degrees on the third of December!!! But hey - we still enjoyed our treat! :D

CtC - Day Two: Cut Out Snowflakes & Hang Them Up

Day Two's activity is cutting out snowflakes & hanging them up!

I opted to keep this one to just Caiden and me since it would be quite the challenge manning Ezra with scissors.

I also decided to keep this a little on the easy side and limited us to 3 snowflakes each. I helped Caiden with holding the paper while he cut it and gave him some guidance on how to cut some shapes. It was a little tough for him to cut thru the thick folded construction paper, but we did a pretty good job working together! :)

The best part was watching Caiden open up his first snowflake and witnessing his wonderment at the transformation!

CtC - Day One: Make Christmas Cookies

Our first activity is making Christmas cookies! I was a little nervous about undertaking the activity, because well, I'm a perfectionist - especially when it comes to decorating cookies these days!! But I told myself that this is a fun, carefree activity that is about the kids and not decorating skills. :)

Caiden and I started off with making the cookie dough, and then Ezra got to help out with cutting out the shapes. I handled baking the cookies and making the (peppermint) frosting to speed things up a little. We still ran out of time on day one, but no big deal - that just left us the chance to decorate the next day without having to watch the clock for bedtime.

I got the kids set up at the kitchen table for our decorating adventure!

Caiden and Brian worked together on decorating, while I teamed up with Ezra. Caiden did a great job frosting his cookies and deciding how he wanted to decorate them. I was really impressed! :)

Ezra took the "shake vigorously" approach with the sprinkles and often covered more than just the cookie. :) He also figured out that he could decorate a cookie by dragging the frosting side over the scattered sprinkles on his tray. LOL!

 I had just enough frosting for the cookies, and the cookies were a perfect size for little hands to manage. I also kept it simple by having only 3 colors to work with. This was a really fun experience and I'm glad the whole family got to participate!

Countdown to Christmas

This year we are kicking off a new tradition - the Countdown to Christmas! I was inspired to do this from a very similar idea I read about on another blog I follow. Here's how it works: there are 24 numbered envelopes. Each envelope contains a fun activity for either the kids or the whole family to do. That's it! Super simple and a fun way to stay connected to one another as we get thru these hectic days leading up to Christmas.

While I do know what all the activities are, I don't know what is in each specific envelope. Well, I know what a few are because certain things need to happen on or by a specific day, but the rest will be as much a surprise to me as it will be for the rest of the family!

I used my Silhouette cutting machine and my printer to create all the cards and the numbers for the envelope. It only took a couple of hours to print, cut and assemble all of it.

 The final piece was going to Michael's and picking out a cute box to hold the envelopes. :)

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this works out!