Grocery Shopping.....

 While putting away the groceries the other day I came across an interesting item. Sitting there in a bag in between the 2 boxes of cereal was a box of Quaker Medium Barley.  I picked up the box and walked into the living room where Dusty was playing with the kids.

I asked, "Dusty, did you pick this up at the store?"

"Pick up what?" with out looking at me

"This box of barley. Did you mean to get something else?"
At that he finally looks at me.

"No. You eat that kind of stuff not me. I thought you bought it."

Finally, after watching Dusty and I having this conversations a small voice behind us says. "I just got it at Wal-Mart."

We turned around and showed Dart the box. I said, "Son, did you put this in the basket while we were shopping yesterday?"

He replies, with the proudest look a 2 year old can have, "Yes mommy. I got it at Wal-Mart"

So apparently we will be having barley soup sometime in the near future. Thanks for helping mommy shop!

Advent Activities Overview

With the rush of the holidays and life in general I got REALLY behind, like stopped altogether, on posting about the daily Advent activities. I know that everyone would love to see how the rest of it turned out so I will give a brief overview of how the rest of the activities ended up. I will say that I had a lot of fun with this even if Dart got a bit bored with it in the end. We didn't do all the activities but we did do most.

I will just start with the last day.

DAY 7 String popcorn garland;

 This Day was fun. Most of the popcorn got eaten by Mr. Dart but we did manage to make a nice little string of popcorn. By the time I decided I was done Dart also decided he wasn't going to want dinner. I also realized I didn't really want to have to find a place to put the garland up so instead I put it ouside for the birds to have something to eat.

DAY 8 Make Paper Trees

 This day was simple. I just made a few little trees and Collin got to put sequence and stickers on them. Then I cut a slit in them for them to stack together. We only got 2 made because Dart lost interest halfway through.






DAY 9 LOOK AT CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

Pretty self explanatory. We drove around a few places in Arlington after dinner on Sunday night. We had been out all day so the kids were asleep in the back seat for a while but Dart did wake up and see some of the bigger displays we saw.  He would point and say "More Christmas Lights!" At every house we say. And as we drove past Six Flags on the way home and saw the roller coasters all lit up and the Superman symbol shining brightly Dart exclaimed "Superman Christmas lights!!!"


DAY 10 PAINT ORNAMENTS

Washable paint, paint brushes and the ornament. Dart was a happy camper. The colors got mixed, and a mess was made but they are a treasure I will keep for a lifetime. I'm really not sure how he ended up with paint in his hair and ears but somehow he did. Needless to say, bath time followed quickly after this.





DAY 11 PLAY IN THE SNOW
Didn't happen. No snow. The other option was to play in shaving cream but we didn't get around to it. Grocery shopping and spending quality time with dad happened instead.

DAY 12 MAKE RICE CRISPY TREATS
Dart helped measure an pour. Treats were made, and eaten with in 3 short hours. WE LOVE RICE KRISPY TREAT!!!


DAY 13 MAKE GINGERBREAD HOUSE
Due to the pieces in the box being broken when we opened it up this one didn't get done either. :(

DAY 14 MAKE GIFTS FOR FAMILY.
Dart helped me to make hot cocoa mix for us to take when we went to see Grammie and Papa. He poured the chocolate chips into the container and he got to help smash the candy canes with a hammer to add to the mix. I think he had a little to much fun with that part.

DAY 15 CHRISTMAS SCAVENGER HUNT.
Didn't happen. Not sure why.

DAY 16 VISIT SANTA
Santa came to visit us at church on this Sunday. The kids got to make a lovely little ornament and they also got to enjoy hotdogs and cookies with Santa. We even got to take a picture with him and Mrs. Clause!

DAY 17 BUILD WOODEN LOCKER WITH DADDY
oops....forgot to buy the nails. So that will be a summer time project I guess. The locker came from a family night activity at one of the Chick-Fil-A's close to us.

DAY 18 PLAY WITH CHRISTMAS PLAY-DOUGH

A ministry that provides the seminary students with food each Tuesday also provided gifts for the kids for Christmas. Those were distributed to us on this day. So instead of playing with play dough we opened the gifts.








DAY 19 BAKE CHRISTMAS COOKIES
Sugar cookies to be exact. We got about 2 dozen made. They were yummy. Dart got to help roll out the dough and he used the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.

DAY 20 DECORATE THE COOKIES
Dart decided we didn't need to decorate the cookies. So we didn't. Less mess for me!

DAY 21 PAINT WITH COOKIE CUTTER
Due to the fact that I was trying to get our house ready to go so we could leave for Grammie's house on Sunday this did not take place.

DAY 22 RENT A CHRISTMAS MOVIE AND EAT POPCORN.
We just watched fun movies on Netflix while we ate dinner. Dart wasn't really into the Christmas movies. Maybe with time.....

DAY 23 AND 24 were cancelled due to our plans for Christmas changing midway though this process. Instead we drove to Grammie's house and we spent 4 wonderful days there.

So there you have it. Our Christmas Activities Advent Calendar. Hopefully I learned a few lessons this year and will be better prepared for the coming years!

Advent Activity Day 6

Today we made hand print Christmas cards. This was a messy project and I HAD A BLAST doing. it. I think Collin enjoyed it too.


This time Dusty was home when we did it so he got to be my awesome photographer while I worked with Dart.

I gathered up the supplies:

Washable paint
Card Stock folded to be a card
News Paper for the floor
2 yr old for the hand print.

And we got to work.

At first I tried to make Christmas trees but the cards I made were too small for his hands. The first card attempt was done with green paint for the tree.

 But when that didn't work we moved on to brown paint and we made hand print reindeer instead.

When we finally got into a grove we cranked out those cards in no time.

Here are 2 examples we made.

When we were done I put them on the washing machine to dry. Once they finished drying I added a red sequence for the nose and used black marker to draw eyes, antlers, a smile and the hoofs.

Advent Activites Day 4 & 5

On day 4 we made paper snowflakes. We haven't gotten any real snow yet since we have still, in December, been experiencing 80 degree days  so I decided I would give the weather a little bit of encouragement.

I folded all the paper during nap time so that would be one less thing for me to have to worry about. We made 10 large snow flakes and 10 small snow flakes. I think I had more fun folding the paper than Dart did with the scissors.







When he woke up from his nap I let him open the envelope to see what the project was. It turned out, yet again, to a bit more advanced for him than I realized it would be so he spent some time watching cartoons while I did most of the actual cutting of the patterns. But that's ok. As long as fun was being had.

Once they were all cut out the fun part began. GLITTER!!! Yes folks that's right. We used glitter. I mean, come on, they had to look like REAL snow flakes and to me they have always sparkled a bit. So I added the glue and Dart got to sprinkle on the glitter.


Here is out end product:

Once they were dry I divided them up and taped them to our down stairs windows. Hopefully this will encourage the weather to be a bit more Christmasy.

Day 5 was just coloring Christmas coloring pages.


I decided that we would need a "down day" after all the fun activities we have been doing.

I picked up these coloring books at Walmart for $1.00 a piece. There were others but these were the three on top so I grabbed them. I have left them out where Dartanion can get to them in case his artistic side wants to color.













Here is Dart coloring his pictures:

This one didn't last very long. The action on the T.V. that I didn't turn off this time was just too much but hey, that is what happens sometimes right?

Advent Activity Day 3

Today our activity was to make a toilet paper roll nativity scene. This project, while fun and creative, I realized was just a little too time consuming and hands off  for Collin. But none the less we got it done, well more me than we, but its done.








I found the pictures I used this Nativity. 

I like the way the picture look and it was designed to go around toilet paper or paper towel tubes.

For the back drop I used an empty hot cocoa box. Its seemed easier to me than trying to follow what was done in the original blog.

 Collin did help with some of the coloring and then he lost interest in the project. I was fine with that just as long as he knew he could come back and help me when ever he wanted to.

He did want to get in on the scissor action but I told him that would have to wait until next year.

Here is our final product:

Advent Activity Day 2

Today we wrote our letter to Santa.

I found a site that says if I send in the letter with a self addressed stamped envelope and 5 dollars Dart can receive back a letter from Santa, a certificate saying he is on the nice list, and a photo of Santa. We are gonna try it. Even if its a scam at least he got to write his letter to Santa.

I started by writing on the lines for him what he was asking for. This year he asked for:
A new book
A new movie
A new Superman and
A new Batman.

Then he got to "write" on his own. He really likes writing and coloring so that part was fun.

Daddy was able to take a minute before he had to head off to work again to help with the letter writing. He is drawing a Superman and Batman symbol on the bottom of the letter.










And there it is. Dart's completed Santa letter. The first one he has ever done!

Advent Activity Day 1

Today we opened envelope number one of our Activity Advent Calendar.

Inside it said: Make Christmas Ornament. So that is what we did.

While the kids were napping I gathered up all the ingredients I would need.

Flour, Salt, Water, Cookie Cutters, Parchment Paper, a cookie sheet and a bowl to mix it all in. (The bowl was still dirty so it didn't make it into the picture.)


When Dart got up from his nap we went into the kitchen to get started. I let him help me by pouring the ingredients into the bowl. It was a process that needed 100% supervision so I didn't get any pictures of him helping me mix. Oh well, maybe next time.

Once the dough was ready he climbed up into his high chair so we could get to work.

I gave him a small ball of his own to work with and he was SO excited to get to play with it. And thanks to my time taking cake decorating classes I had on hand a rolling pin just his size. So for that I have to say, "Thanks Ma. For encouraging to take those classes."

Isn't he doing such a great job of rolling out that dough.

Ok, so it would have taken forever if I let him do that all by himself so finally after a bit I rolled it out the rest of the way for him.

 Next came making the actual ornaments. He picked out each one on his own as we went along. I helped a little with making sure they were completely cut but for the most part he did that all on his own.

 It was really neat to see how proud of him self he was when he would cut each ornament. I am amazed at how fast he is growing up.

From there we put them in the oven. The directions I have say to bake at about 325 for roughly an hour. However, my oven is smaller than most standard ovens so I planned to check mine at half an hour.













Our finished product. The got a bit darker than I wanted to but that is just fine because in a few days they will be getting a paint job anyway.

I really enjoyed today's activity. I hope that this can become a tradition that Dart and I can do for a long time to come. Check back tomorrow to see what we do on day 2.