25 Days of Christmas: Days 9 thru 17

Day 9:  Watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”!

I can’t believe we held out this long, but we did….well I do know why, I’ve only got this on VHS and so I have to go through a whole process to hook up the VCR to the TV in order to view this.  But I needed some time to prepare dinner, so it was worth the investment!  :)  And Finn insisted that they wear their jammies to watch.  They are adorable, who am I to argue?  We will now watch this every single day between now and Christmas!  Love it!

Day 10:  Handprint Santa Craft

We had a friend come to play today and so I decided that was a good time to do a craft!  I found this cute little craft online and cut out some of the pieces last night and gathered all of my supplies to be ready when he got here.  He wasn’t at all interested in doing the craft but he sat and watched while Finn did.  Riley was screaming for paint the entire time but when I finally gave him some he just sat and stared at it.  Eventually he put his fingers into it, smeared it around on the paper and then proceeded to put it in his mouth.  (I don’t think he’s ever going to outgrow this phase.)  In the end, mine and Finn’s is completely done and Riley got about half way there!  Not too shabby.  It was a pretty tough craft, I think, for little fingers.

 

Day 11:  Visit Santa!!!!

Ohhhh, the big day!  We had kind of talked about it with Finn leading up to the day, he was curious about why he had to wait to meet him and so the lies began.  :)  And then when I tucked him into bed, I said “tomorrow we go to see Santa!”.  I don’t know if he slept at all he was SO.DAMN.EXCITED!  I’ve been talking it up with Riley, showing him past pictures with Santa (minus the angry/scary Santa which I had to hide because Finn would not stop talking about it and I didn’t want it to scare Riley, hahahahahahahaha) and every time we would look at the pictures he would get excited.  So how did the big meet-n-greet go???? 

Finn was BEYOND excited to meet Santa!  Couldn’t wait to jump up in his lap!  And what did he ask for?  A giant meatball.  Ironically he did not eat his spaghetti for dinner afterwards.

 

Riley however was a bit more unsure.  He was fine to give him five (high, low and knuckle it out) but when it came time to sit in his lap he lasted only long enough to get a shot and then he wanted out.

A little candy cane bribery never hurt anyone.

yes, he took three.

And all was OK once momma joined in the FUN!

Day 12:  SNOW!!!!

It doesn’t happen here very often and it definitely never happens before Christmas but today it started to snow!  I took Finn outside to go check it out right after it started and he giggled and said “look, snow, now Santa can ride in his sleigh!”  then after letting it fall onto his face and hands for a while he said, “I’m glad it is snowing, I like snow!”  He is so darn cute!  It only snowed for about 30 minutes and nothing stuck, but it did flurry for the remainder of the day which was cool to watch.

Day 13:  Finn’s Christmas Pageant Debut at Church!

I know I blogged about this earlier, when I asked Finn if he wanted to be an angel or a shepherd in the Christmas pageant he told me he wanted to be Iron Man.  Thankfully in all of our “practicing” he hasn’t mentioned Iron Man again!  Phew!  And much to our benefit, our Little People Nativity plays Away in A Manger which is the song Finn’s class was singing!

We had to be at church early so Todd and I split up with the boys since we didn’t think Riley would last that long.  I decided to take the one I wouldn’t have to carry, Finn and we headed in early.  Finn however suddenly got very shy when we walked into his classroom and would.not.let.me.leave.  Finally people had to pry him off me and I had to RUN out the door.  I sat in church waiting and wondering if he was going to come in costume with all the other kids or not.  And he did!  dressed as a shepherd!  So stinking cute! 

When it came time for the kids to sing, one of them was SHOUTING Away in A Manger SO LOUD!  A few others (including Finn) were also shouting, but a little less loudly.  It was HILARIOUS!  And at the end, all of the children’s classes got up to sing Joy to the World and Go Tell It On The Mountain.  Finn LOVES Go Tell It On The Mountain.  LOVES it!  We didn’t get any pictures, we only took video and now that I’ve uploaded the videos, it turns out our zoom on video is not good so the videos are distorted.  I’ll save them for another post.

Day 14:  Caroling!!!

Our neighborhood babysitting co-op organized Christmas Caroling in the neighborhood!  Beyond excited by this super cute idea!  So much FUN!  It was however FREEZING!  We gathered at a house for some food and drinks before bundling up and heading out.  We made it to only three houses before wrapping it up.  We had a lot of FUN!  I took video too which I’ll put in a separate post.

The kids picking up some glow sticks.

Some of the kiddos lined up.  and Riley crying.  He was not a fan of the cold.  He did like when we were singing though and he was trying to sing along, to jingle bells and frosty the snowman at least!

 

 

Day 15:  Eat, Drink and Be Merry!

Our friends got together for our annual holiday dinner!  So nice to get out without the kids and catch up with everyone!  Such a wonderful tradition to look forward to every year!

Day 16:  Make Teacher Gifts

We made some gifts for Finn’s  teachers from some cute ideas I got through one of my mom’s groups. 

First we made ornaments!  Take clear ornaments, pour in some paint and some glitter (though at first we used glitter glue until we ran out), put on the top and shake them up!  I used some pretty ribbon to hang them on the tree!

     

 

Next we made hot chocolate canisters with powdered cocoa, chocolate chips and chocolate covered marshmallows!  I made the labels, put on some pretty ribbon and voila!

Day 17:  Finn’s Christmas Party at School…..

Finn’s school Christmas party was scheduled for Thursday morning….I got a sitter for Riley so I could go and daddy even planned to work from home that day so he could go too.  And then we had freezing rain….ice…..school is closed!!!  Finn was SO SAD.  It was a total bummer!  But then one of the moms sent out an email that she would still host the party at her house so the kids could give their presents to the teachers and the teachers also had some presents for the kids and moms/dads!  Yay!