Countdown to Christmas...ahhhhhhh!

Despite all my attempts to keep things as simple as possible around the holidays, the two weeks leading up to Christmas are pretty much always insane, as I'm sure they are for just about everyone! I figure that as long as the frenzy is at least mostly made up of things we enjoy and that will create happy memories, it's worth feeling a little overwhelmed from time to time.

Speaking of which, since this is our first year doing the Activity Advent Calendar, I thought I'd post some pics of some of the activities we've done already this month...

Lighting the menorah on the first night of Hanukkah (yeah, I know--we're totally mixing our holidays here):




Going to Grandma Marmee & Pop-Pop's house for latkes and cheese blintzes on the 4th night of Hanukkah:


Yum...

And more yum...

Ellie digs latkes!

Decorating the Christmas tree:

Going to the Festival of Lights downtown:


Making ornaments at Moms' Morning at Keira's preschool:

This is a brand-new holiday tradition for us: the PJ Run. Our friends introduced us to the idea and invited us to surprise their kids this year, since they're usually the ones surprising their friends' kids. Basically, the parents arrange for one family to get their kids into pajamas and ready for bed a little early one night, and once the kids are engrossed in storytime, the other family bursts into the house banging drums or pots and pans and yelling, "PJ Run!" All the pajama-clad kids (and parents) pile into cars and drive around looking at Christmas lights, and then end the night by going out for ice cream. Here are all 6 of the kids right before we hopped into cars!

"Wait--we're getting ice cream, too?!"

And here's the first (and best) gift of Christmas this year: my sister's newborn baby, Zachary! The girls got to meet him for the first time today, now that they're germ-free(ish), and they seem to think he's a keeper:

In all honesty, pretty much everything we've done so far as part of the Activity Advent Calendar are things we would already have done, anyway, and there have been a couple of days where we didn't get around to that day's activity (or where I forgot to put the note in the calendar before Bear let the girls open it). It hasn't been perfect execution, but the idea of giving the girls something to look forward to every day leading up to Christmas has been fun, and I'm sure they'll get more and more into it if we continue the tradition every year!