Can it really be December 15th?

I always start out the season with the best intentions. I had almost all of the my shopping finished within a week of Thanksgiving (thanks in part to crazy Black Friday). I took my Christmas card pic and had the cards printed before December. I have all of my neighbor gifts, teacher gifts, and things to mail decided and purchased. I am checking things off my list and feeling really good. BUT I still haven't wrapped the packages, gone to the post office, mailed my out of town boxes or my Christmas cards. I still have treats to bake and things to buy and my girls will be out of school in 3 days. So I am blogging, cuz that makes sense. The one good thing that I am doing this year is an advent with my kids. Last year I bought this cute advent wreath with 24 fun round boxes. So cute at the store, such a great idea until I went crazy trying to think of tiny things that could fit in those boxes and of course I had to get 3 of everything. There are only so many Hershey's kisses you can give a girl before she gets sick of them. This year my blog addicted friend suggested that we put slips of paper in the boxes with things to do instead of gifts to get. At first this idea seemed like a lot of work, but then I looked at some lists of things and realized that most of these are things I hoped to do with my girls anyway. So on December 1st I threw caution to the wind and started. It has been really fun and I must say I am grateful for the focus it gives me, even just for a few minutes each day because really Christmas really should be all about family. These are the 14 things we have done so far:

1. Hang this year's new ornament on the tree


2. Drink hot chocolate with snowman marshmallows


3. Make an ornament wreath (this turned out awesome)


4. Get a snow globe and share a snowy memory, it actually snowed here in Texas that day


5. Go to the Nutcracker Ballet


6. Eat a Christmas cookie and read a Christmas story


7. Put out new blowup 6ft Santa


8. Do a service project at school and then eat a peppermint shake


9. Make Christmas creatures


10. Watch a Christmas special


11. Eat a Christmas chocolate orange


12. Do 2 acts of service for your sister


13. Read a Christmas chapter book (the Holly Joliday)


14. Get a new pair of Christmas Socks

And tonight we are going to see Santa at a friend's house. We have had a fun 2 weeks.

Let's Pretend it is November 1st

Halloween was a good time this year. I did not have to carry any of my children. It was not freezing cold, nor hot and we had no last minute costume break downs. It helped that it was on a Saturday. We were busy most of the day with soccer games and errands, but we still had time to get the cuties ready.