On Why I Didn't Pick 24 Christmas Activities For December

You've seen them, I know. The Advent calendars with a daily "fun" activity for each day in December leading up to Christmas. I've seen them too. And for a long time, I wanted to be a part of that club, to make my own fun activity calendar and do ALL THE THINGS. But every time I would go to make a list, it would stress me out, and for the past two years, I've gotten to mid-December with no activity calendar in sight.

This year, however, I'm not too sad about it. I'm trying to enjoy our Advent and Christmas season with a more simple mindset. We don't have to do ALL THE THINGS, and we certainly don't have to plan ALL THE THINGS, but if some of them happen because that's what we want to do? That's wonderful. We can enjoy them without being sad that we messed up our list or missed something because life got busy.

This is not to say Bah Humbug by any means. We've actually done something festive or Christmas-y almost every day this month.

We decorated the tree. The boys put their own ornaments on, and for the rest of the day the tree was decorated from 3 feet down, and it made me smile. And then I added more ornaments to the top and that made me smile even more.

We made construction paper Christmas trees, and I got to watch my boys use their ever expanding scissors skills to cut out the trees and see their interesting ornament displays (Matthew's float off to the sides of the tree and Jonah's are all in one spot)

We got ice cream as a special treat after an Advent church service.

We watched the Christmas at Bethany concert streamed online from our alma mater.  This brought up fun discussions about the life Mommy had before the kids were born.  They just couldn't quite wrap their heads around that one.

We read a new Thomas the Tank Engine Christmas book and watched a Thomas Christmas dvd.

We made countdown to Christmas paper loop chains.

And along with all that, the boys each have one of those cheap chocolate-a-day Advent calendars, which they get to enjoy if they behave. We also have our Advent candles that we light during dinner every Sunday, and we have an ornament that plays a little 4-line rhyming part of the Christmas story each day.

Christmas is in our house in lots of little ways, but for once I'm not stressing about it. I'm taking each day as it comes, and enjoying the activities that do happen rather than trying to do ALL THE THINGS.