Christmas Activities

This year I decided to make our own Christmas Advent Calendar for the girls.  I came up with an activity for each day of December leading up to Christmas.  Every morning the girls would wake up and tear off a tag to see what activity was in store for them that day.  We colored pictures, read Christmas books, cut out snow flakes, and went to the Live Nativity to name just a few.  Not every activity was over-the-top fun but we had a good time keeping the Spirit of Christmas in our home.

One of the first things we did was to attend our Ward Christmas Party.  Emma and Samantha were asked to play shepherds in the Nativity play.  They were adorable in their robes standing up on the stage.

Of course we had to take the opportunity to have a visit with Santa as well.  I wonder what Samantha asked him for.....

Here is Clara's first time with Santa.  I thought she would have issues with sitting on his lap, but she did just fine and didn't shed a tear.  Of course we only left her there long enough to take her picture.

One night we made popcorn garlands to hang on our tree.  I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was.  It was actually pretty messy and time consuming.  I think we'll have to rethink that activity next year.

Another evening we got together with some friends and had pizza and made candy houses.  Emma, Samantha, and myself each made one.  Can you guess which one belongs to each of us?

One thing we always look forward to seeing is the Elementary School Christmas Program.  Emma and Samantha did so great singing with their respective classes.  You could actually here them singing from our seats.  They practiced for several weeks for their program and we were very impressed.

I also tried to include Church related activities on our calendar.  We watched the First Presidency devotional, we did Secret Service, and we made sure to watch the Christmas classics - "Mr. Krueger's Christmas" and "Joy to the World."  Our calendar was completed on December 24th with Daddy reading us the Christmas story from Luke.  It was the perfect ending and hopefully our 24 days of Christmas created some special memories!