::advent::

I wanted to do something fun for Max this year for an advent calendar type thing since we have all the Sandy hype going on right now.
And speaking of Sandy, he really didn't want me to get this done. I had to do it all with him in my lap or arms, depending on his mood. I got really good at wrapping presents while holding a rather large sleeping baby.

Anyway, I did this same thing a few years ago. We had a playmobil nativity, and I wrapped up each piece of it, along with some treats and movies and different stuff like that. So he gets to open a little gift every night, and generally it's the nativity pieces. He remembered doing it before and was excited to do it again. And it's been encouraging him to play with each nativity character as they come out, which is fun.

So my favorite part of it is the little wrapped packages, they just look so festive.
Here's how it looked a couple of weeks ago, before he had opened a bunch of them:



Give me bowls full of little presents and pinecones and sparkly ornaments any day. They're just so fun looking.

And the master of the feast:

Just wait until Sandy gets old enough to want to open presents too--we'll see how it goes then.
I think that advent calendars are a really fun way to build up to Christmas, and they help little ones understand how long they have to wait until the big day too. Fun stuff.

::advent calendar(s)::

I meant to post about this before Christmas, but here I am doing it now.
We (and by we I mean Max) got to enjoy two whole advents calenders this year. And lucky little boy, he gets the whole thing all to himself--no having to give turns over to siblings. How would that be?
We have a really cute quilt that Kris's mom made for us last year. It has a little pocket for every day. We filled it with treats. What could be better?
We also had a playmobil calender. It took a lot of assembly but was worthwhile.

The playmobil calendar had a little box for each day. There was a little piece of a woodland scene in each box, ending with Santa on Christmas eve. The idea is that he's out in the woods feeding the animals for Christmas. I thought it turned out super cute. I just put it away today, maybe we'll use it again next year.



I think the calendars add to the magic of the Christmas season. I'm a fan.

::boston adventure pt 3::

And here's the last little bit of our Boston adventure.
On the side of the church was a really cool little brick courtyard.

And on the left side of the courtyard there was this really pretty old gate.

I tried googling this gate to see if I could learn anything about it, but it appears to be unimportant--or so google thinks. I think it's cool. The gate led into this little square garden, walled with bricks. The bricks were all covered in ivy.

Max said he thought it was probably just like the Garden of Eden used to be. I told him I didn't agree, but it was a good observation.
Then I asked Kris to take a couple of pictures.


There aren't a lot of pictures of Max and I where I'm not holding the camera myself, so these are fun.

It was just such a cool area. It seemed like there were little secret places everywhere.

(yes, Kris is holding my purse, not his own)
Then we found one more little nook, down a little set of stairs from the original courtyard. And it was just too perfect for pictures. It cried out to be posed in. So we did.



(think max was done with posing yet?)

After that we headed home, since these late fall days have started getting dark pretty darn early.
And on the way home, like a gift, was the most gorgeous sunset I've seen in a while. I took so many photos trying to capture it that I had a really hard time picking just a couple to post. So here are three.



Amazing, right?
The end of this adventure, at least for now.

-> Christmas Decor Part 1 <-

This year I spent a good amount of time thinking about how we should do our christmas decorations before I started working on them. The house we're in now is quite a bit smaller than our last house, and so I have a lot less "decoratable" spaces. In fact, we had to displace Kris's string base that had been living in the corner of our living room so that we could fit the christmas tree in! So it took some creativity to do everything I wanted to do.
I was thinking about ways that we could decorate that would be fun for Max, and maybe even include him somehow. I thought maybe an advents calendar would work. I couldn't really find any that I liked though, and I was reading a magazine that suggested giving small gifts as an advents calender. So I thought I would go for it and do it myself. I got a playmobil nativity scene and wrapped all the individual pieces, also wrapped up some boxes with little treats and a few christmas books that we already owned (that Max doesn't remember at all) and some PJs for christmas eve and then numbered them all. I didn't think this would be that hard, but it took me almost an entire saturday to do it!
I put the little presents in some pretty green and red bowls with some pine cones and ornaments and placed them on the table next to my lovely nativity.
What do you think?
Now I just wish I didn't know what was in the packages! They look so festive and exciting.

So far it's been working out great for Max. He's able to keep track of what number each day is and he loves the playmobil. We've been talking about the different characters of the nativity as we open them up. I hope it's helping him to learn. It's definitely helping to build excitement for Christmas for all of us I think!

Stay tuned for part 2....