The Four Blevins : December 2011

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas!

We have had a wonderful Christmas! We woke up Christmas Eve and got ready to go to my mom's for lunch. We had a great time visiting and then headed home to open our presents and get ready for Santa. I wanted to get a quick family picture and this is the best we could do... :)

We spent a fun night opening gifts - Here is Hudson in his new tractor rain boots.

Reed jokingly put one of the gift bows on his head...

and then this happened... :)

After gifts, the boys played with their toys while I started dinner. (Everybody uses their Lego minifig head lamp when playing Angry Birds... right?)

When Brian was younger, on Christmas Eve his family had what they would call a "feast". It was essentially fruit, cheese, smoked sausage, crackers, veggies and dip. Here is our feast...

Before getting ready for bed, Reed decided he needed to write a letter for Santa. I was in the kitchen cleaning up and came back to find this...

Instead of cookies for Santa, we made one giant cookie. The boys wanted to try it, so they ate an arm each. We left the rest for Santa along with some chocolate milk.

The loot...

We had a wonderful time opening presents this morning and then headed off to church.

From our family to yours, we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Day 23

Our activity today was to make smores by the campfire. We had some good friends over for dinner tonight and they joined in the fun. :)

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Day 22

Today our activity was to go look at Christmas lights. It is one of my most favorite Christmas traditions. I remember being little and wearing my pajamas in the car and my parents would take us to look at lights. We ate dinner and piled in the car. First stop- Starbucks. We then headed to a few different places to look at lights. It's sad, but I think fewer and fewer people are putting up Christmas lights. The streets were fairly dark with a house here or there with a display. But we always end on a high note with the lights at Andy Rash Photography. If you haven't been, GO. It is awesome. Unfortunately, Hudson fell asleep right before we got there and no amount of shaking would wake him up...

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Day 21

Our activity for today...
Christmas Tree Campout! The boys and I made a bed on the living room floor (not before vacuuming)

We settled in for a night of TV, hanging out and falling asleep by the Christmas tree.

I don't know how long I'll last on the hard floor, but I'm going to give it a shot... :)

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Day Twenty

Today's activity was shopping for some Christmas kids our church class has adopted. We take up money every year and then some people sign up to shop, some to wrap and some to deliver the gifts. I knew I wanted one of our activities to be shopping for some other kids for Christmas. This presented a perfect opportunity for the boys. Our class ended up taking up more money than we had planned, so we shopped for two little boys. The four of us went to the store and Brian and Reed shopped for one of the boys and Hudson and I shopped for the other. We bought clothes, undies, socks, shoes and some toys. I think the boys really had a fun time picking things out. After shopping, we all went and had lunch together. It was a fun time - and a great activity.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Days Sixteen - Nineteen

Yep, we're behind on activities. I figured the closer we got to Christmas, the more messy it would get. We had a very busy weekend and weren't home much, so we ended up saving 4 tags and doing them all today. :)

First, (day 16) was to read the story of the birth of Jesus. Here is Reed reading while Hudson listens.

Next (day 17) was to color a Christmas coloring page. We all picked out a page to do - Reed picked the North star and Hudson picked a picture of cookies and milk for Santa. Mine was Santa coming down the chimney, but the boys finished in about 12 seconds, so I guess I'll have to work on mine later.

Third, (day 18) we did a craft. I have no idea what it was called, but it is a little metal shape that comes with plastic beads of different colors. You put the beads in certain places in the shapes and put it in the oven to melt and it makes a sun catcher you can hang in the window. Ours were stockings.

Our last activity (day 19) will be to watch the Polar Express in our jammies and eat popcorn tonight after dinner.

And now we're caught up. :)

Just on a side note, after a very gray day full of clouds and rain, I looked outside a little bit ago and saw this beautiful sight...

I love little blessings like this!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Day Fifteen

Today our activity was to get milkshakes after school. I didn't get any pictures, so just imagine us at Chick-fil-a drinking chocolate shakes. :)

This afternoon I was cleaning and came across the t-shirts I bought to make the boys Christmas shirts. I decided to do an easy 'truck hauling a tree' design.

I let the boys pick out the fabric they wanted for their trucks. I think they both turned out pretty cute. :)

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Cookbooks

Mark and Ali Kaiser are our missionaries in Itu, Brazil. They are an awesome young couple that have done so many things for the people of Itu. It started with them opening their home to homeless who needed a place to stay. Then they began feeding many of these homeless men at their home. Now they have started the CHANCE project, a rehab facility and halfway house for homeless men that have no where to go back to after deciding to make a positive change in their lives. (If you'd like to read more about the positive things they are doing, you can visit their blog here.) In order to help out their great cause, I decided to get a cookbook fundraiser together. Many of the ladies (and a few men) from our church gave hundreds of recipes and the outcome was this book-

There are 450 recipes in the following 8 categories-

Slow Cooker (over 50 recipes)
30 minutes or less (over 50 recipes)
5 ingredient dishes (over 60 recipes)
Family Favorites (over 60 recipes)
Side Dishes (over 70 recipes)
Recipes for Kids to Help With (over 50 recipes)
Desserts (over 125 recipes)
Holidays & Gifts to Give (over 60 recipes)

As you can see by the categories, I wanted this book to be full of time saving, easy, fast recipes. As a young mom (or working mom or even someone who doesn't like to spend a ton of time on dinner) I know how much I like a good, quick recipe. I have already made multiple things out of it and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite books.

We are selling the cookbooks for $15 each.

Please consider giving a cookbook as a gift this year - great for moms, daughters, nieces, neighbors, co-workers or friends. As always, I will be selling the books before and after class on Sunday mornings and before class (from 6:00 - 6:30) on Wednesday evenings. If you do not attend church with me and would like to purchase a book, please let me know and I will make sure to get them to you ASAP.

Day Fourteen

Today our acitivity was to have hot chocolate and stir it with...

CANDY CANES!!!

The boys both really liked this idea and seemed to think it was much different than this activity. :)

Hudson has been in his Phineas and Ferb pajamas for a solid 24 hours now...

gotta get those things washed ASAP.

We got a kick out of Hudson's candy cane curling up in his hot chocolate. :)

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Day Thirteen

After yesterday's barn fiasco, I was looking forward to an easier day...

and luckily, today was Christmas pajama day! They each got their own pair of Phineas and Ferb Christmas pajamas. Reed was a lot happier about it than he looks in this picture. :)

Monday, December 12, 2011

Day Twelve

Today our activity was to...

I bought a gingerbread house at HEB a couple of weeks ago on sale. That was the plan until my mom stumbled across this...

Um, heck yeah! Why would you do a gingerbread house when you could do a ginger bread barn? So we unpacked this super cute barn and I started to assemble the pieces. It looked a little tricky since there are 4 pieces for the roof, but the cartoon drawn instructions on the back looked easy enough. :) It only took a couple of minutes for the sides to stick together so we started on the roof. I got everything together and it seemed to stay in place pretty well. Then I had to spend the next 10 minutes putting all the red icing on... it was a bit of a beating. The boys started decorating...

As they are decorating and I'm squirting icing out for them to squish pieces into, I notice one of the roof panels starting to slide. Then I notice the same panel on the other side start to slide. I add more icing/glue and we go back to decorating. In a few minutes, I notice one of the panels I just glued sliding again. I add more icing. At this point, I'm annoyed and I'm tired. I got up before 5:00 and have barely sat down all day working on a giant holiday to-do list. The gingerbread barn project is not impressing me. The boys and I decide we don't want to keep going with it, so we just set it aside and clean up. In a few minutes, I hear a noise...

Yep, it fell off. Fine.

Then in another few minutes I hear a small thunk.

Yep, the next panel broke in half from the weight of the icing that I had to use to keep the stupid things on!

Ug.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Day Eleven

We're almost half-way through our calendar! I can't believe it! This has been so much fun and the boys are loving it. I will certainly do it again next year.

Today our activity was... another craft! We did Christmas themed sun catchers.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Day Ten

My post is so late today because we had our first Christmas of the year. We went to Graham today - we left at 9:00 and got home at 7:30. :) Brian's aunt rented a bouncy house for the kids to play on and they HAD A BLAST. I barely saw them all day. Anyway, that's why my post is so late. We got home and went directly to the calendar. Today's activity... a Christmas Lego magnet! Someone is excited....

This kid loves his Legos...

I started on Hudson's and pretty much did his entire thing - he helped a little, but it was a bit above his head. Reed however worked quite hard on his and wanted to do it all himself.

Hudson's so proud of "his" hard work.

I did help Reed a teensy bit with the Christmas tree, but he did everything else himself. :)

Friday, December 9, 2011

Day Nine

Day nine started off not so fun. Reed woke me up last night at 2:30 crying. He said his throat was hurting and he had a little bit of a fever. I gave him some tylenol and a cup of of chocolate to sooth his throat and he settled down and went back to sleep. I woke him up at 6:30 to see how he felt and his throat was still sore so I kept him home from school and called the doctor when the office opened. He does have strep, so he's just not feeling great. After we got home from the doctor and I got more tylenol down him, he asked to see what the calendar's activity was for today. :)

We pulled the tag and it was to read The Night Before Christmas. He and Hudson got these really cool books from Brian's grandparents last year. They are the recordable book from Hallmark (you've probably all seen the commercial of the deployed soldier who gets one in the mail and his kid has recorded himself reading it? Makes me cry every time.) Anyway, Brian's grandparents did these for all the great-grandkids. Reed's is the Night Before Christmas, so they sat down and listened to Jo Jo and PaPa Grubbs read to them. :)

After we finished, Hudson said "That is so cool! I wanna go get mine." His book is Frosty the Snowman and he absolutely LOVES it.

He's probably listened to his 15 or 20 times since I got them out. The first time he opened it, Grandmother's voice comes on and says "To Hudson Axel Blevins". He looked at me with wide eyes and said "The book is talking to ME!" It was super cute!

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Day Eight

Today our activity was making Candy Cane Blossom cookies! I totally highjacked them from Pinterest because they are just too cute. You can get the recipe here. First, we colored the sugar. On her blog, it says to do that the day before so it has time to dry, but I saw that about 2 hours before we were supposed to make them so... oh, well. The sugar was a little lumpy, but not bad at all.

Then we unwrapped the candy cane kisses. This project actually worked really well - the boys always had things to do as I mixed up the dough and rolled it into little balls.

Then they took the balls and rolled them in the colored sugar and put them on the pan to bake.

We took them out of the oven and stuck a kiss in each one.

They really turned out cuter than expected for a 7 year old and an almost 4 year old. :) I think they'll be pretty yummy too.

And as requested, here is an updated picture of our advent tree. This is pretty much the first thing Reed does in the morning when he gets up for school.