This is the letter that we wrote to start the whole season off. It was so fun delivering the tubs together and talking about what each of our favorite gift was to make or give this year.
Day One:
To start off we gave them an advent calendar with things to read each day and put together a picture of a nativity. I did not get a picture of that as David was really efficient in getting it wrapped early. He helped a lot more this year with the wrapping and has decided that that job can now officially be mine from now on:)
Day Two:
I made snicker doodles and peanut butter snicker cookies. These are some of Seth's favorite cookies and so I had him in mind when I made them. All the children called that day and loved them! They said they were some of the best cookies ever. I do have to say my children grew up on chocolate chip cookies - I never ventured out very much in the cookie making - so I think they were surprised that I actually made something other than chocolate chip!
Day Three:
I had Chelsea in mind when I made these perpetual birthday calendars. She is always calling me and asking dates for birthdays. It turns out that all the kids loved this one as well. Since I have already made this for myself last year David and I bought the whole series of Harry Potter movies. We only had a couple - so when the children opened these at our house they were so happy. We spent last Thursday having a Harry Potter movie marathon. We started at 8:00 in the morning and finished to halfway through no. 7 at 12:45 that night. We finished no.7 and no.8 the following morning. I know it might sound like a waist of a whole day - but it was truly one of the funnest times we've had in a long time. No on got dressed - pj day - we ate popcorn, made cupcakes and ate our food all without missing any parts of the movies. The only thing that would have made it perfect was if David could have had the whole day off to be with us. As it was he didn't get home that night until 10:00 - its hard this time of year being a UPS man!
Day Four:
Socks!!!!!! That is a lot of pairs of socks when you are counting 17 pairs of feet!
Day Five:
Popcorn and a game boxes. I filled a pencil box with a deck of cards, dice, scorecards, pencils and directions to about ten card and dice games. At our house at least, we can never find the dice or a full deck of cards. The plan is to have it stay in this box and it also is easy to travel with when we go on family trips. The popcorn is just plain fun to have for any kind of fun - games, movies, etc.
Day Six:
These ornaments turned out so cute. I saw them on pinterest and had Toshia make me up the names and initials (of course I could not tell her why I wanted them and I am sure she was curious). I found the ribbon at Costco and the ornaments at Michael's. I used a whole punch for the circles from the scraps of vinyl.
Day Seven:
We usually do a puzzle over Christmas break. So we thought why not get everyone a puzzle and who doesn't love to do a puzzle?(Noah - he had me work on most of his and then when there were about 10 pieces left he stepped in and finished and took all the credit - gotta love the kid!)
Day Eight:
Aprons. Not just any kind of apron but Christmas aprons. The boys got "Santa" one and I made the cutest ruffle ones for all the girls. The picture does not do the girl one justice - it really is cute. For Jonathan I did his foot and hand prints and made a reindeer on the front of his and Reagan got the cutest little ruffly thing I could come up with. Along with the apron you have to have something to cook so I put together a cupcake kit. I know we had fun at our house making the cupcakes!
Day Seven:
Again, David wrapped this gift before I could get a picture. It was a childhood story from David and I made journals for the kids. David is always sharing his adventurous childhood with the kids and so he put together a story of the time his brother and him went to see the total eclipse of the sun. I guess this does not happen that often and it was great adventure for them. The kids got colored pens to doodle and write in their weekly journals.
Day Ten:
David worked for a few months on this one. He put together a history of how the Weitzel's came to America. He starts his story clear back to Catherine the Great of Russia. His ancestors came from Prussia. He did a lot of research and put together quite an amazing little book with pictures and maps and the Weitzel genealogy. He had a lot of fun putting this together and even the little kids thought it was so cool!
Day Eleven:
PJ's - Funny side story. I really messed up on this one. When you are buying for 17 you are bound to make a few errors. I mixed up a couple of the sizes and even ended up buying too many pairs---can I just say that black Friday was crazy this year and I am lucky to have gotten it as together as I did! I just gave away that I did not make the PJ's this year - honestly I got such a good deal at black Friday that it was worth it to me this time.
Day twelve:
Again, I do not have a picture but I could not really take a picture of this one. Every year we have a family reunion with our children. We started this about a year after Ashleigh moved out. I wanted to have a tradition of reunions in the summer. So we set aside a weekend every summer for our reunions. This year we wanted to do something extra special. So we gifted the children (all of us boyfriends included) a paid trip on Jerry's Jet Boats to cruise up the Rogue River for the day. We will also try to go to the Wild Animal Park in Winston. Everyone is so excited for this trip. David and I did it last summer for our anniversary and really all we could think about where we were on the river is how much fun this would be if the kids were with us. So I guess you could say that day twelve is the gift that we will have to wait for but in the end it will so be worth the wait!!!!
Today when we got together for Christmas Day we had waiting for the kids one last gift. Santa apparently made a visit to our house and left goodies for everyone. This truly was one of the best years for us. We have been so blessed with all we have and for the children that are in our lives. Everything went to smoothly and David made it through another year of deliveries. {by the way, he had 18 hours of overtime last week - Santa really needed his help in getting all those packages delivered}. We hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas and that 2012 is a year of great joy and love!!!!
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