It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The start of December saw us start to decorate our house with Christmas decorations. The kids were quite excited about it all. Daniel was at school but Eliza and Alexander helped put up some of the decorations that weren't breakable ;-) I was very happy with the Christmas stockings placement.

Daniel openned our first Christmas countdown story and also put in our first nativity piece.

The kids were excited to do their Christmas tree decorations advent calendar too. I love that they still enjoy it.

Eliza got to do Day 2.

And Alexander did Day 3.

Daddy read us the book

Thanks Mr Noble

We had our first street Christmas party which was a big success. Basically since we moved into our house 9.5 years ago we have said that we should do a street Christmas party. Since starting school I have met a lot more people and said hi to them as we've walked to school. When we did the renovations we met more neighbours as they asked how it was going, what we were doing or commented on how it looked. This year, Meg and I decided we would actually make it happen. We met up one morning and worked out a date that we both were free. Meg then made some invitations which we laminated and the kids enjoyed playing postman to deliver them all to our neighbours.

When 3pm came around I looked out and no one was there. I decided to take the kids out on their bikes and then take food down if/when others came. Fortunately it wasn't very long until some people walked down. In the end we probably had about 3/4 of the street come down. It was great to meet some new people, have a lovely chat with friends and old neighbours, hear about how long different people have lived in the street, and eat some yummy food. The kids had a lovely time playing together and the older kids were quite patient of our younger kiddies. Yay for a new tradition what we hope will happen every year.

Alexander also started to pedal his own bike which was pretty exciting. It's amazing what you can do when your parents are stubborn and say they won't push you around the road and you are stubborn too and really want to ride your own bike.

 Christmas cards were an activity that kept Daniel and Eliza busy for a while, writing a Christmas card for each kid in their classes and attaching a bauble to the envelope.

The house on the corner has a wonderful lights/inflatables set up and the kids just love looking at it, waving at the Santas, reindeer and penguins, but especially love watching Santa go up and down the chimney. It does add 5 mins to our walk to school each day though.

Being Christmas time, the swimming teachers need to have their baked treat. This year was making a really easy, but simple Christmas pudding treats. The look really tasty too.

On Saturday 15th we got our Christmas tree. First though, we set up James' impulse buy from Christmas last year of a star. He was pretty pleased with it. I think it looks a bit tacky but it has grown on me a bit.

James headed down to the local Scouts to pick our tree up. He then neatened it up and set it up inside. Perfect :-)

The kids then had a blast decorating it, with the help of us to put special things up higher. First we had a big discussion about the order. I thought light, tinsel, decorations. James thought decorations, tinsel, lights. Google agreed with me so we did it my way but decided to avoid the tinsel for this year and go for a simpler look.
One of Daniel's school friends' mums recorded their tree decorating, and we decided to follow suit.

James and Daniel working out the best lighting of the tree

Santa's little helpers

Nice photo... but you can't see the tree

Crazy photo

There's the tree

On Sunday morning we had our annual Santa run with the local Fire Brigade. These guys are such legends. Saturday night we had some full on storms which caused a lot of blackouts in the area, including our house. Many of these guys were out all night restoring power, tarping houses, helping in anyway they can. They then followed it up in the morning with the Santa run because they didn't want to disappoint any kids. As I said - legends! The kids were very excited to see the firetrucks and Santa and the Elf. They were more excited to get lollies from them too. Alexander was a bit upset from the noise of the sirens but by the time they had turned around at the end of the street it was more used to it.

Hi Santa!

I then decided to have the kids do a bit of Christmas wrapping paper but doing potato stamping. It was a bit crazy while they were doing it, but they did pretty well on the whole. A little bit of paint ended up on the pavers, a foot ended up in one of the paints, fingers ended up in the paint, but other than that we survived. The wrapping paper looked great! There Christmas trees, candy canes, stars and presents to stamp with.

I then let the kids do a bit of free painting.

 

Eliza's painting of our family at Christmas time

Then in the afternoon we walked (and Daniel scooted) to the local park for our church's carols. The stormy weather went away (just) and the night was perfect! The kids were excited to see Daddy while his band played.

They then wanted to get a balloon and their faces painted. They were patient waiting in line.

snowflake

balloon mouse

my little reindeer

The kids loved the Carols. They enjoyed dancing down the front and playing instruments to Jingle Bells.

They had a great time playing with the glow sticks. Jacqueline was wonderful and brought around glowsticks for each of the Mainly Music kiddies. She kindly offered for Daniel and Eliza to have some too. I'm so glad for thing because once it got dark it was quite hard to spot the kiddies!

With James being involved in organising the carols it was a bit of a stressful night, especially once it got dark because I couldn't spot the kids all the time. At one point I had lost Alexander. He had walked back to where we were originally sitting. I'm glad that it wasn't dark yet and I could spot him. Then once it was dark, I lost Daniel. He eventually came back and when I asked him where he went he told me happily 'I went down the front and danced'. Why not kiddo. Maybe next time let me know where you are going/ At least he knew where to come back to. My plan of staying for just a few songs went out the door because the kids were enjoying themselves so much, which is a good thing. I'm glad that I had my mums group there too because they was an extra set of eyes to keep on my kiddies.

Once the night had finished we walked home via the Christmas lights. It was a quick walk-by because it was late and the kids needed to get home to bed but they were still excited about the lights.

Thursday we had Mother's Group here so I decided to make some reindeer biscuits for the kiddies. They got to make their own ones which resulted in chocolate all over fingers and faces but very happy kiddies. They were pretty cute.

That night was then our gingerbread house making night. It was a lot of fun chatting with the ladies, being creative, stealing ideas. Just fun. I am quite happy with the finished piece from this year.

Happy Almost Christmas!