Christmas is Coming!

December is in full swing... being day 3 and all... and I thought I'd let you all in on a little of what we've been doing. (BTW... I'm hoping to do more of this, posting I mean.)

With a preschooler in the house (and yes, he's totally a preschooler!), it's officially the year for decorations. I haven't fully "done" Christmas since our first year married... 2005! Before your chins drop all the way into your laps, allow me to walk you through the last few Decembers...

2006 ~ Tornado was born December 4th. I needed every day of the 6 weeks to recover that time and Tornado was not taking to nursing, so every other day we were back to the hospital working with the lactation consultant and weighing in (him not me). Decorating wasn't even on my radar. And I didn't even care. Believe it or not, you can still celebrate without dragging all that stuff out of the closet!

2007 ~ I had a one year old and was 7 months pregnant. Did I mention Tornado was walking at 11 months? In our very small home, I decided I didn't have the energy for that. I may have put a few things out.

2008 ~ Tornado was 2, Sweet Pea was 9 months... I decided the kids weren't going to notice if we didn't decorate... and the house was in such bad shape, I couldn't bring myself to clutter it up more with decorations.

Now here we are in 2009... I've been working hard on the house and things are definitely getting better. I have a preschooler and a 21 month old who love the few things I've put out... and are really going to love the tree when we get it. Yes, it's going to be tough to have my 21 month old and a tree in this little house, but I don't have the "no energy" excuse this year and I'm excited to get back to a "real" Christmas. I was challenged recently by this article not to let the worlds commercialization of Christmas keep me from pulling out the stops on celebrating my King! This article is full of ideas for pulling out those stops in a practical and frugal way.

So what have we been doing this week?

1. Christmas music (during the day while My Beloved is at work... he prefers it this way.)


2. We've decorated... though we don't have much. I imagine I'll add to it throughout the month.


3. We've started our advent countdowns!














4. We've begun our Daily Christmas Activities! Though I hadn't started these yet, so today we scrunched days 1, 2, and 3 in. Day 2 and 3 are both angels anyway, so we did the reading for both and then did one angel craft. The kids had a lot of fun! Afterward we sang "Hark the Harold Angel Sing" (the first verse) a thousand times (at least I did). When Tornado was tired of it, I found clips of the song on You Tube. By the time we stopped, he was starting to join in.


And that's basically it for us so far this month! We have many more plans. Check out the daily activities for Christmas at Hubbard's Cupboard (there is preschool stuff there too... more on that later!)

Labels: As it happens..., Christmas, Homeschooling my 3 year old

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 12:18 PM