Christmas 2015: Reverse Advent Calendar Part II

this post will be updated daily for the next few days
 
Day 8:
We went to a friend's home for a play date this morning. We had a dance party in the living room and ate blueberry muffins and milk. We came home to play with the extra Christmas light strands, which reminded me of last Christmas' picture by the tree. Maybe we should repeat this year?
I also got some organizing done! You may think this is not Advent-ish but this is me nesting and making preparations for the rest of the season hehe!

And I am going crazy with the realization that all of this:

Fits here:

Day 9:
Today was my sister SABdD's birthday! We took showers just so we could sing a happy birthday song to her and send her a video. Then we made a simple but time consuming (especially if two kiddoes are "helping" you) cake for Mr E's birthday tomorrow. I put a little piece of the sugar bag in our envelope, to remind myself that life is sweet and we have lots to be grateful for. We followed this recipe:
http://www.milorambles.com/2015/01/02/celebration-chocolate-mousse-cake-mary-berry-recipe/


Day 10
Birthday boy had fun :) And we took our first winter family pic. Click here for the birthday post :)

Day 11
This week we shot a video of ourselves singing happy birthday to my sister, and then we prepared for Mr E's birthday- and celebrated him, of course. So Miss E has been saying that Christmas is "a lot of birthdays." Since Miss E has been a little confused about whose birthday Christmas is all about, I thought I'd try to approach the Christmas story from a different angle: puppets.
It started out as a "let's make our own nativity scene" attempt, but I soon realized Miss E wanted to give them all tutus and paint them pink. I figured shadow puppets were a way to get straight to the story. I cut the super simple figurines out of a kettle corn box in the shape of peg dolls and we took them to our living room lamp to use as puppets. We went through the story a half dozen times! Hopefully that will help Miss E get her story straight.

First I showed her a much fancier version of the nativity shadow show, here.

Then we made our puppets and started playing :)

 We also have this book on her bedside table :)
 They both love going through the animals that saw the story happen and the noises they make!

 Day 12
Miss E requested that we play with puppets again :)! We made princesses! Blue winter princesses with limbs that move using a string (still perfecting our puppeteer skills, though, I have to admit!) Q and I started playing and singing Christmas carols with them at night, but I am not allowed to post my cute videos of him with his guitar.

All the websites I found with instructions say to use special pins for the joints, but we used clipped craft pipe cleaners because we had them in hand :) I bet even a bread tie would do the trick.

I printed out some Christmas puppets but I reserved them for our trip to Juarez. We can do a craft with the primos maybe!


Day 13
Snow day! We were stuck at home all morning but it was warmer in the afternoon so we took the kids out for like 5 seconds. hahaha! 

Day 14
We made orange cookies!! They were okay, but it was fun to try something new.

Day 15
We went shopping for card making supplies and gifts. Still did not finish getting all we needed, though! Serious prep day for travel and other Xmas related stuff. We talked to kids about giving gifts to other people in celebration of God giving us his Son. Miss E liked the idea. Mr E does not care, really, as long as he gets to walk around the store isles and say hi to everyone.

Miss E in her Sofia the I pajamas :)

Day 16
I worked on Christmas cards and Miss E made a mermaid. She brought out all the materials from the shelf and set up her work station and got to work! It was so very grown up of her, I thought. And the mermaid is so detailed! I mean, that nose has nostrils! She also painted the ocean and "the mermaid's fish friend" which apparently has hair? Or maybe it is red like her hair? Something like that.

We also wrapped some presents!! Yaaay!

Day 17
Finally figured out how to change the ink on our printer! yaay! I addressed the cards during nap time yesterday afternoon. Today we got the Christmas cards mailed!! If you are a Fox, you should know that you are getting two. The first one was made by the kids (and my letter to Marcella) and Miss E and I sent it a few days ago but it came back for lack of postage, so we sent it with the picture card -and the appropriate postage- today.

It's our first official Christmas card ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have been doing laundry, cleaning the car.. doing lots of work so that we can be ready for tomorrow's trip to Laredo to visit my grandmother (and then we are off to Juarez for the annual Christmas visit.) Since we will be out of town for Xmas, we let the kids open their gift from Q and I. Maybe we should have let them open the gifts from their aunts and uncles on Q's side! But they played nonstop with the tree house and the wooden train set, and Q and I were running around like headless chickens so it escaped my mind that there was a part 2 to this pseudo Xmas morning thing. It was a good idea, I hope. We won't let them take presents with us to Juarez (too many small parts) so I wanted them to have a day to enjoy them before we left- and that they did! It makes me happy. Mission accomplished. Partly. I think they'll open more presents tomorrow before we leave ;)

I'll be absent again for a few days as we go back on the road tomorrow. May you have a wonderful Holiday Season. Merry Christmas to you and yours!!! Much much love from our little family on the go.