Red Envelopes 5-9

We have been having some fun keeping up with our activities.


Dec 5-- C got to hang out with grandma and grandpa while I went out with some friends for one The Polar Express, but he got scared.

Dec 6-- We went shopping as a family to Toys R Us to pick out a gift for a 4 year old girl we'd chosen from our church's angel tree.  She is a little girl who has one or more parents in prison.  We weren't given any suggestions, just a price range, so it was interesting trying to decide on something. 

Dec 7--Scott's parents came over for dinner, and then we went to a live production of the City of Bethlehem the day after Jesus's birth. You walked through and various "shopkeepers" and "guards" and "pharisees" and "shepherds" spoke about the rumors or interactions with the family/birth.  It was pretty cool.  At the very end you saw the live nativity.  It was about a 10-15 walk through and C seemed to really like it.  Then we piled in the car with our popcorn and coffee (water for C) and drove around looking at lights. 

Dec 8--we were going to go to St. Charles for their Xmas festivities, but it wasn't very nice weather, and I'd forgotten I had a cookie exchange, when I'd settled on that activity---oops. I wasn't feeling very well, so Scott and C ended up having a pretty fun boys day.  They shopped for me (I think) and went to dinner together for pizza.  C scored his first ever soccer goal in his scrimmage at the end of practice.  He actually chased the ball down, dribbled it to the net, and kicked it in.  It was great.

Dec 9--we are going to take C to see the Santa at Plaza Frontenac (rumor has it he's the best in town), and then we are going to our church's family Xmas gathering.  Scott is really busy prepping for 2 surveys Tues/Wed, so he's pretty busy.

Sorry I haven't taken any photos.  I will try to do better this week. 

Red envelopes 1-4

Here are a couple of the Nativities we saw on the Hill Saturday night.

 

I was a bit disappointed in how few businesses had them up, but we probably saw close to 10.  Then we went to dinner at this pizzeria/bar that was really delicious. 

 

Day 2 was watching the new Grinch, but we still haven't done that. We got really busy putting up our tree.

 

Day 3 was watching Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

 

Day 4, tonight is making a donation to Bethany Adoption Services in honor of Stella.

 

Just for good measure, a couple of photos I just recently "found."

 

 These are from July

this one is Thanksgiving Day at my aunt's house

 

 

Outdoor decor

My favorite thing about living in Chesterfield is how many people decorate for Christmas.  It is so cheery going out at night and seeing all the lights.  There are LOTS of them.  We by no means have a lot of lights or decor going on outside, but we have a little bit. 

 

At dusk

 

Our "white and silver" tree in our living room.  This is our fake tree.

 

Our real tree.  C and I just bought a new topper today.  I let him pick it out, so it's not really my "style," but he wanted an angel. 



Christmas Decor

We don't have our main family tree up yet, so those pics will have to come later, but we did already get out the rest of our decor.  I didn't photograph every little detail--that seems a bit overkill, but just the overall look.

 

Repurposing a garland I had made for our kitchen in Normal for our bannister.

 

Our sleigh holding our Xmas books

 

Buffet display. 

You can't quite make out my Merry Xmas garland across my mirror, but it's there.  You can see our Jesse Tree waiting patiently to be decorated through Advent.

 



 

My cousin's wife sent me this activity last year when I was stuck at home so much, but we didn't get around to it, so this year we are giving it a try.  Each day we read about a different "character" that impacts the Xmas story and hang an ornament that corresponds with that one.  You can see the Noah ornament--the ark and the God ornament just peeking out--Earth. 

The mantel.  Have you ever noticed one stocking always refuses to behave, or is it just me?

 

 



 

Entry table--you can just see part of my Willow Tree Nativity.  C says he loves seeing it every time he walks by.  He generally slightly adjusts an animal in passing. 

 

Atop the toy area.

 

I need to snap some outdoor photos in day and night as well.  We have some lit garland up on our upper porch and lights on our shrubs.

 

Now to get seriously busy about Xmas cards!

Kicking off Xmas

Advent doesn't begin until tomorrow, but we kicked off our 25 days of Red Envelope activities today.  I am being a bit more ambitious this year with how much we are trying to do b/c we might not be able to do much with a 9 month old next year.  Even though we've lived in St. Louis before doing it with kids is a whole other thing. 

Our box holding the envelopes--found it at JoAnn's.

 

Day 1

 

Pretty Xmas paper...it's the little things that make me happy.

 

Day1: Celebrate the Nativity

 

Start reading our advent books (b/c they go 25 days, but Jesse tree starts tomorrow (even though I wrote it here--oops).  Bonus activity--Christmas on the Hill.  We are going to the Italian neigborhood of St. Louis for their Christmas extravaganza.  All the shops have Nativities in their windows, they hand out Salamites (some secretive Italian treat), chestnuts, you can do carriage rides, and a free concert. Not sure how much of it we will do, but we are going to head down this afternoon to walk the storefronts and eat dinner at a yummy Italian restaurant for sure. 

 

We've already discussed our Nativity this morning and read about the Holy Land.

Thanksgiving recap

Wow!  November came and went in a blur.  I don't know if it was because Thanksgiving was so early this year or what, but the month flew by.  We enjoyed doing our thankful activities.  We completed 29/30 of them--I think that's pretty good.  C got overly excited and got ahead of himself while my parents were here.  He kept having another person pull one out...the little stinker, so we got a bit befuddled around Thanksgiving.  The thankful board disappeared a day early (b/c of the mix up), and we start today on our Christmas activities--but that's a whole other post. 

Probably the coolest activity we did was take a pie to a neighbor.  The first 2 we tried to take it to weren't home, but C really wanted to get it delivered.  We ended up going a bit further down the street to a man's house I had met a couple of times, and he had brought my dogs back when they escaped our fence in early November. Anyway, it was so serendipitous that we ended up with them.  The family had been going through a challenging time moving an aging parent accross the state, selling off her possessions, but still trying to figure out what to do with what was left.  It really felt like the pie was a cool gift that allowed us to bridge those weird neighborly "fences" we put up.  You know just hellos and such.  It was really a wonderful experience. 

Here's just a couple photos I have of stuff.  I helped at C's feast at school.  His class were Indians and the 3 year olds were Pilgrims.  They were so well-behaved.  Preschool is an amazing thing! 

 

Our little Fast Wolf (that was his chosen Indian name)

 

a craft we made together

 

Posing himself for some photos that he sent to nana and papa to tell him he was thankful for them and his surprise Snoopy.

 

Baking crinkle cookies.  This was probably the most he's ever stuck with cookie baking.  Usually he is done after the mixing, but he helped me roll out the balls and dip them in powdered sugar.

 

C and I also made gifts for his teachers--caramel and chocolate apples w/fall leaf sprinkles on a Thanksgiving plate with hot cocoa and a turkey chocolate.  I forgot to photo. 

 

Our giving put Scott in the mood to give the office staff he directly works with Thanksgiving giftsm and he asked me to make the wine look nice.  I photographed those. 

 

 

I thought we could do better than just handing these women who work in alcohol just a bottle of wine. I wrapped the bottless in a fallish kitchen towel, with some yummy chocolates, and a cute little owl. 

 

We went to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving.  It was wonderful to see some of my extented family b/c we just don't get to see them often. It had been almost 2 years since I had seen my grandparents.  C had a great time visiting as well.  My parents came back with us for the weekend, and we had a very nice long weekend.  We did a little bit of shopping, and my mom and mother-in-law and I went downtown for afternoon tea at this cute London Tea room.  It was delicious. 

 

Mystery night

We had a great weekend recently.  We got to visit our friends from BlmNormal and attend a murder mystery dinner.  We had a blast.  We really got to maximize our hang out time b/c grandparents were taking care of the kids the whole time.  It was tough keeping up with the late nights since I'm preggers, but it was worth it.  I really thought we might get kicked out of the restaurant we ate lunch at we were such a rowdy group of adults.  The mystery was set in 1930s Britain, but we look a bit gangster, too. Here's just a few photos. 

 

We were all assigned a character.  Scott, a lawyer and golfer; me the wealthy man's secretary; Bree, a sexy American starlet; and Stan, a doctor. Stan's bag was magical.  He had it stuffed full of premade shots and mini-liquors.  He would say, "Anyone have an earache?" and pull one out.

 

The whole crew. The other guests were, a wealthy businessman, an heiress/eyeshadow model, the host's bastard son and avid mountain climber, and a famous author. 

this picture cracks me up.  this was at the very end.  not one person guessed the correct murderer.  we were all fooled.

Giving Thanks

I found this project/board on Pinterest that I fell in love with.  Really it was 2 ideas.  The one was a board with all 30 days of November with a pocket to hold a blank card to write on each day something you are thankful for.  I felt this was too advanced for C to come up with 30 things or to write.  I loved the concept though.  Then I found this sewn project with a similar idea, but it provided ideas in each day of things kids could be thankful for and an accompanying activity.  I melded the two ideas together, and here is what I came up with.

 

I plan to make my activities more uniform in size for next year b/c they keep slipping into the pockets, but other than that I'm really happy with this.  I also had to handwrite a couple b/c I only found 22 stock activities, so I added a few.  We are having so much fun each day remembering to be thankful and doing something fun or kind.  

 

Here are the links to the ideas I used. 

 

http://jellybeanjunkyard.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/tuesday-tutorial-give-thanks-gratitude-board/ 

this is what I followed for the exterior. I used a canvas instead of plywood b/c I was too lazy to go to Lowe's.  I decorated mine slightly different, and I couldn't find very large letter or # stickers, but oh well.

 

http://angbrimwil.blogspot.com/2007/11/thankful-activities-for-calendar.html 

these are really good with quite a variety.  i added a few activities that added some things i wanted to do.  it would be so easy to adapt these activities to different ages. Some are simple, some require an act of service, and some are just plain fun. I feel like these are definitely geared to 8 and under. 

Thanksgiving decorations

We love Thanksgiving at our house, so I like to decorate for it just like Halloween. I leave up all my generic fall stuff, but switch out the holiday-specifics.

 

 

Had a hard time finding a place for my sign, but settled on the dining room window

 

I found this vintage-inspired turkey votive holder.  I bought 2...love.

 

my entry way

mantel

 

funky stick turkey

 

outside shot--to the right is a little give thanks sign

Halloween

At school ready to party.  He left his mask on for 5 minutes or less

 

Ready for trick or treating with lots of clothes on underneath.  It was chilly.  He only went to maybe 10 houses b/c he was cold and tired. 

Catch up

I'm behind, I know.  C's class went on a field trip last week to Thies Pumpkinland. It was pretty cute.  I don't think it is quite as good as Rader b/c you can't ever pick your own pumpkins, but they have some different fun things. 

 

 

Kiddie zip line

 

they had tons of structures to climb on/through.  here's a class photo...not all the kids were there.

 

we carved a pumpkin tonight.  Scot took C to a school event last week where they decorated the other pumpkin

 

school photos. 

 

super akward photo that C thinks is his favorite. it was nice they were outdoors