December 1st

I've seen quite a few people out in blogland doing daily December challenges, so I'm going to take a stab at it myself. I may not ever make an official journal out of it, but I'll have blog posts to look back on! :-)

December 1st is an eagerly anticipated day in our house.... it's the day all of our countdown activities begin.

Besides the books, we also get a Lego Advent calender each year. They LOVE these calendars! Every year Lego has had a City calendar... this year they also offered a Knights one... however, I didn't get to the Lego store in time to get it :-(

It doesn't really matter... they love it, no matter what the theme.

When they were both at home, we used to do the calendar in the morning, and the books at night. This year, with Clara going to school, we've had to modify this.... especially since the boy is a sleepyhead and is occasionally not out of bed by the time Clara needs to leave for school. This was the case yesterday.... he had just gotten up when she had to leave, so the Legos had to wait until after school.

They had already devised a system based on their ages.... Clara is an odd number (9) so she does the odd days, and Alex (being 10) does the even days.

Clara eagerly opened this first one...
and found a snowman inside...
to put together...
Then came the fun of trying to decide where to place him in the scene. This year's calendar looks like it is mostly inside the house (our last couple have been outside scenes), so the snowman is standing guard outside the front door.

From there we headed out the door to our evening classes.... Clara to her character class where they are working on their dances for the dance school's Nutcracker production... in last night's class she worked on her Spanish dance... she absolutely loves that dance. I took Alex on up to swim... and did a little Christmas shopping while he was in class. Jeff picked up Clara and met us for dinner out, since Clara's piano lesson was canceled. It was so nice to have a pretty low-key family evening.

When we got home, Alex opened the first book (whoever doesn't open the Lego calendar, opens the book). And the kids read and arranged the puzzle pieces in the book...
It was a really nice kick-off to December!