December 1st: Christmas Post Office The plan for today was to open the North Pole Mail Room. I hung Christmas lights in our office and made a sign naming it the North Pole Mail Room. I hung big snowflake mailer envelopes on the wall with pictures of a few family members and friends. And then I put out craft supplies for the kids to make cards and letters to fill the envelopes. The idea is to keep adding crafts, notes, and other things to the envelopes, and when they are full, drop them in the mail and start another envelope for someone else. We will see how it goes! Today Maia made cards using lots of stickers, Donovan cut up paper and wrote his name on them, and Serenity made a few cards and dropped them in. At one point all three of them were in there playing post office, so I am thrilled so far!
The kids woke up and immediately went to check the advent calendar. I had put suckers in the big advent calendar, which were a hit with all three kids… a very sticky, messy hit. Suckers are going to have to be weekend treats or we are going to have to wait to eat them until they are stuck in the car. Serenity has a big lego kit divided up into baggies for each day this month. She got the Queen Dragon kit and is SO excited! DZ really wanted the punch out advent calendar, so he got Lego Star Wars again. Fun! I wanted Maia to have a punch out one too, but she’s not quite ready for the big kid legos (she plays with them, but it’s more take apart than assemble play!) So I found this WOW car set. She has been playing with Serenity and Donovan’s WOW cars, at least on occasion, so I thought it would be fun. Her first window had Santa in it! It’s really cute! However, the one a day thing hasn’t sunk in. She opened three or four others when I wasn’t paying attention, so I have to hide her box under the bed. She did, however, read all the numbers on the advent calendar, so we now know that she can recognize numbers up to 25!
The kids all played with the Little People Nativity set, and Maia put together my chunky wooden Christmas Puzzle multiple times too. It’s so great! Maia spent a lot of time today taking ornaments off the tree and putting them back on in other locations. One broken Anna so far but she’s being fairly gentle.
We are listening to Laurie Berkner Christmas and Pentatonix Christmas music in the car. Today Maia sang along with Hallelujah, Frosty, and Jingle Bells. Her sweet little voice is so adorable!
Today was Chess Club day, which means after Eric brought Serenity and our neighbor Daniel home, they did homework together and we all went to the park. Maia rode her Tinkerbell bike to the park. She was adamant that she could do it and she actually did. As they made their very slow way to the park, Eric texted me her running commentary. “No Help” “Maia Power!” “Go in the Street” “Hurry” “Hurry Daddy” “No no no no no” “Woohoo Yippee!” “This Way Hide and Seek” Too funny!
