21st

The finished products:

Much cuter in person. 

Our last gift was on Monday night. 

We watched The Grinch and drank Grinch Punch. 

It has been one of their favorite gifts. 

:)

Excitement

I've been terrible at taking pictures to document our fun the past few days. 

Everyone's excitement is growing. 

They love reading all the Christmas stories. 

This season is so magical and I hate that it seems to disappear so quickly after that special day. 

What can we do to keep it going? 

Saturday night we took the kids out for supper after church and drove around looking at Christmas lights. It was so fun to hear them oohing and ahhing over the fun ones. 

And we loved listening to them sing along to the Christmas music we had blaring. 

Today's gift was making Christmas goodies with the Yoders...again no pictures but we had a lot of laughs and made some very yummy treats for later this week. 

2 more days left of school!!!! 

December 19th

Today's gift was very fun and GLITTERY!

Each of the kids got to paint and apply glitter to an ornament. 

Tomorrow we will add their pictures and possibly pom-poms for those who want. 

I know my years are numbered for projects like these with all 5 of them.

Drying and waiting for their pictures tomorrow. 

They don't look nearly as pretty in the picture as they do in real life. 

Back log

We got a little behind in the blogging…

Monday was my mom's 69th birthday. 

I love to have the kids bake and craft on her birthday. 

Doing things that she loved with my kids makes me feel closer to her. 

We made a fun snowman craft that turned out great.

Then we made a fun and easy cookie that did not turn out at all. 

Betty Crocker fail. 

Our little trees are filling up with our special ornaments that represent our daily devotions. 

Grinchy

There was a request to see the finished products!!

Last night's gift was watching Jim Carrey's Grinch with pop corn, m&m's and hot cocoa. 

Before the movie Tess insisted that Jordan and I open our Christmas gift from her early. 

Her reading the card was the gift…in my opinion. 

I loved that at the end of the card she asked, 'How are you doing?'

All snuggled in for the movie

More snuggles 

Catching up

We took a day off yesterday but we're back at it today. 

Today's gift was gingerbread houses. 

Tori has been loving helping me create the ornaments for our devotions. 

Still loving the one we are using this year…25daysofchrist.com
Making these ornaments is not something I would typically love.
I am not crafty or artistic.
Jordan pointed out that this was totally a project my mom would love…
my mom was super artistic and crafty. That has made me enjoy making the ornaments.
Seeing my hands covered in paint and hot glue burns reminds me of her hands. 

I love having her read Christmas stories to me. 

And she perfected the bubble making! 

And now a random picture of Falstaff searching for nerf bullets, always searching for nerf bullets. 

December 7th

Tonight's gift was our Christmas train. 

It adds something very fun to our tree. 

Its fun to see them get excited about these traditions we have. 

After supper I snapped a few pictures of what everyone was up to…

The big girls, they aren't always this quiet and relaxed. 

Sullivan is always moving, always has a ball, always being loud. 

I will miss it a lot. 

But man, how did my mom handle 6 boys?!

Contessa really wanted to learn to blow a bubble with her gum tonight. 

And Torrance stayed took advantage of using the train on her own. 

December 5th

Yesterday's gift was one I was so excited for! 

Really it was a gift for me. 

Then Avery got invited to a friend's house to spend the night and we decided to have fun at her expense along with our own Saturday night fun. 

Since she was staying at Yoders we could text pictures to Mandy to be mean to Avery with. 

Look at us having fun with the selfie stick without you Avery! 

We opened the gift Avery!

Guess what it is? 

A new hot chocolate maker...she was SO MAD!

I had one of these a number of years ago but it died from so much use. 

Truly, you cant drink hot chocolate any other way after you have one of these.

Look at my yummy hot chocolate Avery!

(no gift for day, Sunday, mom's having a day of rest.)

December 4th

Last night's gift was watching the Polar Express and 

making smores in the oven. 

The smores turned out great and ended with requests to do that again! 

And somehow this was the only picture I took. 

December 3rd

Tonight's gift:

Our mystery reader was Grandma. She brought with her a new Christmas story. 

But because she is amazing, she started out by telling us the story of Daddy's birth and the box of special items she keeps from his birth. The kids soon understood why she chose to show us these things. 

A blanket made by some special friends.

And some pictures were among the fun pieces we got to see. 

Next Grandma read us the story. 

All about the treasure box Mary kept from Jesus's birth. 

It is a very sweet retelling of the story through Mary's eyes. 

I highly recommend adding it to your Christmas collection. 

The idea of a 'mystery reader' was a new one for our 24 gifts tradition. 

Its definitely a keeper! 

The kids also enjoyed sharing Rice Krispie treats with Grandma before she left. :) 

December 2nd

Today we read about the angels appearing to the shepherds. 

We agreed this would have been a scary and awesome scene to behold! 

Lauren read Luke 2:8-18 to us from her bible and then 

Daddy read the passage to us from Torrance's bible. 

(The sweetest bible in our collection)  

Next up was opening the gift...which was topped with candy canes.

Today's gift included some of our Christmas movies and books, 2 small nativity scenes, a nativity rubik's cube (nothing says Christmas like a rubik's cube), and a Mickey Mouse countdown with chocolates (Everything in this box was something we already owned except for the Mickey countdown which I purchased this last year after Christmas for $.25 - they were ridiculously excited about it!)

December 1st

Every year in December we do '24 gifts'. 

The name is a bit deceiving…because there are not 24 and the 'gifts' are almost all things we already own. December gets so busy that finding time for something 24 days can be too much and the purpose is to open special christmas items that have meaning to us and not to get new things…

The kids seem to love this tradition and I hope they love reminiscing about it as they get older. 

We also do special Christmas devotions. I've tried lots of different things and this year we are doing something new. I got it from 25daysofchrist.com and after reading up and doing 1 day…I love it. 

Each day this green bag will hang on our tree. 

Inside is a special handmade ornament. 

They will take turns opening it each day and hanging it on these trees. 

And then we will read the corresponding scripture and talk about it. 

Its sweet and simple and gets us into the Christmas story.  

After the devotion we opened the first of the 24 gifts. 

Tori was especially happy to discover that it was our Fisher Price nativity. 

And Avery was especially happy to discover that it included sprees candy!

But this year the stable was empty. 

So we read this story from our Christmas collection and 

talked about all the people and animals missing. 

And then we went on a scavenger hunt to find the missing pieces.

Then we filled the stable. 

When we were done I told the kids that for my personal devotions I am writing out pieces of the Christmas story and drawing along with it. I invited any who wanted to participate to sit down with me. 

I had 3 takers today. 

Happy, excited kids!! 

Christmas is here!!

We started decorating a couple weeks ago but now, Christmas is really here!

December first is tomorrow and I am going to track our countdown, devotions and fun here.

Really, I promise!

Here's my favorite photo to get us started. 
Sweet baby girl, please stay 5.