25 days of Christmas

When I was little my mom or aunt or someone always gave me an advent calendar. Usually the cardboard ones with the little flaps with a piece of candy. Clayton has had that kind for the past two years but this year I wanted to do something different. So of course I consulted Pinterest and found several different types, some with candy and some with fun thing to do, some with wood and some with paper...I decided I wanted a chain type calendar so I thought out 25 fun little things we could as a family or just Clayton (Charlotte is involved in some but this was kind of something just for him). I can't wait to see how excited he gets with each link.

Day 1: Write a letter to Santa.
        This was so much fun! He rambled for several minutes as I tried to catch as much as possible. Here is his letter:

Day 2: Call a grandparent and sing a song. I wish I had recorded him singing the song to the answering machine considering when we did the song it was 8 our time meaning no one was awake in GA!

Day 3: Do a special craft with mommy.
          I took this as an opportunity to work on the special art gift we are doing for our family as their gifts. It turned into a family affair and was so much fun.

 Clayton's feet

 Right before the paint went on

 Where Charlotte was held while we painted

Day 4: Have a Christmas song dance party
Here is is video of the dance party

Day 5: Visit Santa: Jason's unit had a Christmas party on the 5th and Santa made an appearance...perfect timing ; )

Day 6: Have banana snowman for snack (got this idea from pinterst)

 Day 6 he says

Day 7: Wear new pjs to bed...thank you Grandma!

Day 8: Check out a Christmas book from the library...due to an issue with returning a movie on time we are not allowed to check out any more books for a few weeks...oops! So we chose one from the bookshelf.

Day 9: Drive through post and look at Christmas lights. This was a lot of fun for the whole family!

Day 10: Family movie night. After Clayton got dressed for the night "someone" rang the door bell and Clayton rushed downstairs to find a package from Santa. There was a goody bag filled with popcorn and candy and The Polar Express. Family movie night was so much fun and I hope we can do it more throughout the year.

Day 11: Snowman pancakes for breakfast. This was fun for me more than Clayton I think. I saw the idea to make snowman pancakes on Pinterest (where else). Clayton of course loved them!

Day 12: Clayton and I made a tray of yummy treats for the staff at his school. The director put them in the break room and I hear they were gone in an hour! We made magic bars, chocolate no bake cookies and haystacks...so good!

Day 13: Clayton loves to get cookies and bread and treats from the bakery at the commissary but usually that is a no no but on this day I let him chose one treat to share with his family that night after dinner. He chose a marble cake with chocolate whipped butter cream icing.

Day 14: Unwrap a book from under the tree. The book was 10 Little Gingerbread.

Day 15: Read The Polar Express. One of my all time favorite books...love the message!

Day 16: We made an ornament to put on his little tree. It was a reindeer made of a toilet paper roll and some other various things I found around the craft closet.

Day 17: We made snowman pizza for dinner (another idea I got from Pinterest).

Day 18: We made gingerbread men as an after dinner treat. They were actually very yummy!

Day 19: We made reindeer hats and took silly pictures of each other. Clayton had just been given my old camera so it was fun to play around with his photography.

Day 20: Take coffee to daddy at work. It was nice surprise and broke up the day since Clayton was out of school and getting cabin fever!

Day 21: Read the Nativity story and set up a Nativity scene in his room. Clayton and Jason did this in place of a night time story. Sweet :)

Day 23: Decorate Cookies. We actually cheated on this one and made the break and bake with the reindeer on them...still fun to do but not as messy!!

Day 24: Read the Night before Christmas.

When it was all said and done I really feel like it was a great month of fun activities and I cannot wait to do this again next year with both kiddos!