::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.

::Christmas Eve::

I just love Christmas Eve. It's such a great magical sort of day. We had a pretty good one this year. We started it out by visiting the gym, and then we went home and cleaned the house in preparation for the big day. After that Kris had to do some studying and Max and I hung out for a while. We were planning to go for a late lunch to one of our favorite Italian restaurants in town. We drove out there only to find out that they were closed! I guess that's what we get trying to go to a small family owned place. We were disappointed, and went back home to regroup. Luckily we got home just in time to meet some friends from the ward who dropped by with delicious Christmas treats. After we visited with them for a while we headed down to the Plaza to get burgers.
This is us waiting in the car while Kris ran into the grocery store to grab rolls for Christmas dinner.

Burgers were good, but Max had a tough time concentrating. The fact that his meal came in a little red wagon didn't help with the concentration, but did for sure add to the festive atmosphere of the evening.

You can see from this picture that monkey (oh whoops, I mean SOCK monkey, I get in trouble for that all the time) also came with us to dinner. He comes with us most places lately.
After dinner we headed home where Max opened up his Christmas Eve PJs and his last advents present. I have to say I'm really really pleased with how the advents presents turned out. They were really exciting for him and I think even helped him get a better idea of the passage of days in general. Also, the Playmobil nativity was great, I think it really helped him relate to the story. So I'm happy with how it turned out. (Oh yeah, except that the day after Christmas at bedtime he was very upset that he didn't have a "number present" to open. That was a little tough to explain.)
We read the Christmas story in the scriptures and then acted it out with the Playmobil.



After that we read the nativity pop up book that's a classic from when I was growing up (I was so excited when I found the book at a used book store a few years ago).
Then Max put out Santa's milk and cookies (yum) and hit the sack. Nice and early. Then we had the rest of the evening all to ourselves, just the way we like it!

We somehow convinced Sultan not to eat Santa's goods.
More Christmas to come!! I'm sure I'll finish with the reporting sometime before Easter rolls around.