Christmas Trees and Such — Becca Stanley

We had, yet another, full and fun weekend. We got our tree up and decorated gradually. And I even finished my advent calendar by December 2nd, so almost on time. I've been wanting to share what we're doing for advent this year, because we're trying to be a little more intentional with Christmas this year, now that Jayci's old enough to actually have some sort of idea what's going on.

To make our advent calendar, I (and again, I sometimes like using "I" to describe work primarily done by Adam) cut chicken wire to fit an empty frame I got at the thrift store. And then we Adam stapled gunned the chicken wire to the back of the frame. Then we simply picked out 25 ornaments and hung them on the chicken wire with paper clips. I was going to pick 25 beautiful ornaments, but then Jayci begged to help, and I just gave in and let her choose the ornaments. The plan was for Jayci to put an ornament on the tree each morning.

But then we also wanted to do some special family activities along with the ornaments, so I cut up a paper bag from Publix, and made some quick activity card. They range from "go to see the Nutcracker," to "Drive around and look at Christmas light." to "watch Christmas movie" and "read the Christmas story." Some of them are more in depth ideas, and others are as simple as "have a dance party to Christmas music."

Then we simply hole punched and tied each activity onto an ornament so Jayci can take the ornament and put it on the tree, and then we have a special family activity to do that day too. We wanted to try and be intentional about spending family time during the holidays, particularly because we have so much hectic very-much-not-alone-time . . .

Jayci likes the advent calendar so far. We are also doing a slightly ~~ghetto~~ vintage elf-on-the-shelf that we happened to find in our Christmas boxes. We wrote a little note to Jay from Santa introducing "Twinkle" the elf. We realize, however, that there is little chance of Jayci believing in Santa for long in our neighborhood, because the kiddos come over nearly daily and loudly ask us if Jayci STILL believes in Santa. And they keep asking and asking and asking who REALLY wrote the note from Santa about the elf. Even though Adam burnt the edges for authenticity. Although I'm not positive how that makes it more authentic.

Jayci has enjoyed the Christmas festivities so far this year, which just makes it all that much more fun. She was very intent and careful in decorating the tree. Even spreading the ornaments out as high as she can reach, rather than sticking them all on one branch like she did last year.

Sometimes I try and take some impromptu pictures for our Christmas cards and this is what I get. Brilliant.

We also went to this Christmas-thing-that's-hard-to-explain that we go to every year. And "scary Santa" was there again, and Jayci managed to actually get close enough to him for 2 seconds so I could snap a picture. Unfortunately, they were looking at the ACTUAL photographer, and she high-tailed it out of there before I could ask her to look at me. Not that I can blame her.