25 Days of Christmas Activities

We were so busy making memories that I haven't had a chance to blog it...so here it goes.

We made a fort (out of our dining room table and a sheet) and read Christmas books in it.

 Lilly read a book.

 Then Reid read a book.  It is all about "sharing is caring" in this house.  Ha!  That is Lilly's favorite saying these days.  I haven't figured out where she picked it up at. 

 Then I made cookies from a bag my secret recipe cookies for us to decorate! 

This was the setup. 

 At the store Reid wanted blue icing.  I didn't realize it didn't have a tip so it came out kind of thick.  Oops.

 Decorating!  At first Lilly was focused on decorating. 

 Then she got distracted by eating the icing...

 and then it took a turn for the worst and she started sucking the icing right out of the bag. 

 This was Lilly's cookie. 

 And this was Reid's cookie.  Matt put on the face. 

Matt shocked me with his gingerbread cookie skills!  This is his cookie. 

One of the things we had planned to do was to make dinner and a treat and take it to my Aunt Jan but when I talked to her it worked out best for us to just go to lunch.  So we met her for some pizza and brought her some of my homemade-from-a-bag cookies. 

 We had such a good time visiting with Aunt Jan.  Both of the kids wanted to sit next to Jan and talked her ear off. 

We made ornaments.  I had actually planned on having an ornament party and making several ornaments but it just didn't fit in the schedule. 

 We put paint in a clear plastic ornament and shook it up.

 Shake, shake, shake.  Once the paint covered it all, they put their handprint on it.  I have rubbed off on my children because they LOVE to do their handprints. 

 Then I sprayed them with a sealer. 

This wasn't on our calendar but we went to lunch with Grandma Odie.  Or as the kids call her, "Grammy Odie". 

 We went to the Golden Coral.  We love our Grammy Odie!  Reid had chocolate covered strawberries for the first time. 

 They were a hit! 

 Before we left for Benton we had a dance party to get out all of that energy before the car ride.  We danced to Jingle Bell Rock at least five times because that is Lilly's FAVORITE Christmas song.  Every time it would come on the radio she would say, "I love that song!" and when it was over she would say, "Play it again!"  Luckily I had a CD with it on there. 

 We had so much fun dancing our wiggles out! 

 Then we watched Polar Express and ate popcorn on our way to Benton. 

I loved doing the 25 days of Christmas.  We didn't get to everything and we definitely didn't get to it every single day but we had so much fun doing what we could when we could and I loved that it was in our schedule to have some family fun.