Wow, I didn't do a very good job keeping up with posting about our advent fun, haha. So now you get a whole bunch of days dumped here instead of nicely categorizing the days in sets of 5 like I had planned.
Day 6 - Ugly Christmas sweater photos! Every year we try to get a few photos of us in our ugly Christmas sweaters. It's been a fun yearly tradition. Though, if you do ask me, none of our sweaters are actually ugly! I love them all!!
Day 7 - Play the left/right gift passing game! This is a fun game I learned via Cub Scouts years back. You find a left/right story (like Santa knew he LEFT his bag of toys RIGHT there.....) and each time the reader says left, you pass the gift to the left. Each time the reader says right, you pass the gift to the right. This goes on and on throughout the story until at the very end whoever is left with a gift gets to open it! Now, it is more fun in a large group with a only a few gifts (typically not everyone gets a gift!), but for the sake of keeping everyone happy, we had gifts for each of the kids. They just didn't know which one they would end up with. And they are small gifts, not big and expensive. We did two things of candy and a chow mien dinner, lol.
Day 8 - Enjoy a hot chocolate bar! Hot chocolate is something the kids often get to enjoy during winter, especially around Christmas. But we've never made it fun by doing a mini hot chocolate bar! I didn't have a million different toppings, but I had just enough to set up a fun table and for everyone to have fun! And at the end, Papa used up the rest of the rediwhip by spraying it in the kids' mouths, haha. Sugar overload this night. Grandma and Grandpa also got to join us for the fun.
Day 9 - Eat dinner by candle light! Molly and I had a good time digging up a bunch of candles to light for our candle lit dinner. We didn't have a fancy meal, just a salad with all the fixings, but it sure felt fancy and fun eating by candle light! We even listened to Christmas music.
Day 10 - Get a double serving of dessert! So because I had to take Anthony to the orthodontist this day and didn't get home till 8pm, I was too tired to take photos of the kids eating their huge double serving of ice cream. But trust me when I say the ice cream was plentiful.
Day 11 - Decorate sugar cookies at Grandma's! More sweets. Look at what December does to us, lol. Usually we don't eat so much junk. But......you have to decorate cookies in December. Most every Friday we go to Grandma Cathy's for dinner, so that's where our sugar cookie decorating fun took place! I baked up a whole bunch of sugar cookies, grabbed what frosting and sprinkles I could find at the store, and everyone had a great time creating their Christmas masterpieces! You can tell which cookies are Tim's by the excessive amounts of frosting and sprinkles, haha. We really had a great time.
Day 12 - Watch the Goldendale Christmas parade! Every year Goldendale has a Christmas parade down main street. It was always our tradition to make a reservation at The Glass Onion, getting a table by the window, so we could eat a delicious dinner and run out and watch the parade as it went by. We couldn't do that this year because The Glass Onion is no longer. I am still really bitter about it's closing. It was our favorite place to go. *sigh* However, not all is lost. A new place called The Dirty Cowgirl took it's place, and while it's not the same level of food, they do offer some great BBQ style home cooking that's pretty good. Because of Covid, we knew we couldn't eat inside, so we called and asked if they could reserve one of their outside picnic tables for us. They did so....and also reserved one of their firepits for us too!! I was so excited to have everything fall into place for us like that. It's not The Glass Onion, and it's not exactly the same tradition, but it was nice to be able to be in the same spot and watch the parade like we've always done in years past. We invited both sets of Grandparents, as well as our friends, to join us and we had a super time! We bought drinks and snacks and hung out by the fire and was able to watch the parade. Hopefully we can do that again next year! I'm super thankful to the owners of The Dirty Cowgirl for going above and beyond for us like that. It was really sweet of them.
Day 13 - Paint Christmas trees! I bought a pack of small canvases, broke out the paints, and we all painted our own version of Christmas trees in the middle of the kitchen floor. I loved seeing the different creations we came up with.
Day 14 - Enjoy 2 hours of family video game time! Soooo there are no photos of this night because this didn't happen. Apparently, even with the spirit of Christmas all around, kids can be naughty jerks and have their advent fun revoked. Instead they went to bed early and Sam and I enjoyed a Christmas movie by ourselves. Merry Christmas, kiddos!!
HAHAHA
But really, kids are kids. As much as I'd like to say they are angels all the time, in reality they fight like cats and dogs and there has to be consequences for poor behavior. Even in December. Even when I really wanted to have a night of family gaming.
Day 15 - Sleep over in Mama and Papa's room! They might be getting older, but one of their favorite things to do is camp out in our room. Even Anthony....at 13 years old. On any given morning we will wake up and have one of the kids sleeping on our floor. It's always a surprise to see who's head Sam will accidentally step on upon rolling out of bed, hahaha. Unfortunately Anthony wasn't home for this one. He had an after school FFA Christmas party he attended, and then instead of driving all the way to town to pick him up, we had him walk to his Grandma's house and spend the night. Since they do online school Wed-Fri, he's able to log on to his classes on any computer, wherever he is.
With love,
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