Here Am I. Send Me!: An "A" for Effort

Last year we began a family tradition of Advent... celebrating the 25 days leading up to Christmas by doing certain things together as a family each day. It was so much fun. This year we planned to repeat our Advent calendar, we even changed up some of the things with new ideas.

Then.
We had a baby.

They don't lie when they say 'a baby changes everything'. And a baby born 2 days before the 1st of December can change the entire Advent fun that was planned. As in going out to do things was no longer easy... or at times even fun. So some of our Advent activities were no longer realistic.

We're okay with it. We give ourselves an "A" for effort. Out of our 25 planned activities, we managed to do almost all of them. The crossed through ones are the ones that we didn't get to do... some ended up happening accidentally at a later time...

1. Attend DTS Christmas party.

2. Set up Christmas decorations.

3. Decorate our tiny Christmas tree.

4. Attend YWAM staff Christmas party.

5. Set up nativity.

6. ~~Make holiday crispies and give them to neighbors and friends.~~

7. Sing Christmas carols.

8. Date night with Daddy.

9. Make a Christmas craft.

10. Wrap Christmas presents. (finally got to it on Christmas eve)

11. ~~Make family Christmas stockings~~. (maybe next year)

12. Drink peppermint hot chocolate in our pjs.

13. Read the Christmas story. (Grandpa did on Christmas morning)

14. ~~Donate $ to the Salvation Army bucket~~.

15. ~~Visit Santa Claus~~. (I was pretty sad this didn't happen...)

16. ~~Pick out and donate a toy~~.

17. Go on a family walk.

18. Road trip to Grandpa's and RooRoo's house.

19. Build a snowman.

20. Make a gingerbread house. (well we did gingerbread men instead)

21. Go sledding.

22. ~~Make and decorate Christmas cookies~~.

23. Watch a Christmas movie. (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the old cartoon version, and Elf)

24. Put out milk and cookies for Santa.