Advent calendar activities: Week Two

Week Two! Met with the Preschool Plague and a visit from my mother-in-law. She tolerated the sickies and participated in our "activities" and didn't even appear upset when I burned dinner one night.

Catch up with Days 1-7 here.

Day Eight:
Make a gingerbread house. We did not so much "make" it as we did "decorate" it, since I found a pre-fabricated gingerbread home (or would the gingers classify this as a trailer, thus making it completely appropriate for my family of formerly-trailer-living gingers to decorate?) at Target for almost no money. And when I say "we" decorated it, I obviously mean that I stuck my poor mother-in-law with Sam and told them they could have at it while Molly and I went to a cookie exchange. (No need to nominate me for the Daughter-In-Law Of The Year Award, I'm fairly certain that giving her such cute grandchildren already makes me a shoo-in.)

Oh, what's that in the background? The mess from the horrible ornament painting experience that I can't bring myself to clean up? I'm very seriously considering chucking every last bit of it in the trash. But I guess I'm letting that idea marinate on my brain for a bit, which is just another way of saying that I'm not cleaning that up right now.

Day Nine:
Christmas lights on the Cumberland River.

It was freakishly foggy and warm that night, although if you looked at the cuddly couples walking through the lights in their ski jackets, you wouldn't guess it was 60+ degrees out with a humidity percentage of 3,000.

Here we have quite the assortment of seasonally appropriate clothes- Molly: no pants, Me: yoga pants, Sam: sweatpants (with sandals- uber-classy) thanks to an accident earlier in the day. 

Sam met a friendly dog and was so bold as to pet it! And a gratuitous blurry phone picture of the semi-lit Screaming Eagle.

Day Ten:
Mail Christmas cards.

Most extreme case of bedhead EVER. Also, mom-fail. The envelopes are too wide to stick in this mailbox. Clearly he is peeved and I just got a quick glimpse into the teenage years. Hold me.

Let me see, I can fix it. I gotta do EVERYTHING around here. You just gotta shake it a little and throw some spit on it.

Her rosy cheeks are cute, but she is feverish and sick. Poor thing. Even then, she still pushes right on through, taking care of business and sorting the mail.

To be honest, I didn't have all of my cards ready by this day. Only half of them were addressed and stamped. We made a big special drive-thru trip to the post office mail box later in the week. *fancy*

Day Eleven:
Watch a Christmas movie.

Yes, the sun is approximately eight and half feet from my back door at all times, and also, yes, we watch this exact Christmas movie (Baby Einstein Baby Santa Music Box Christmas circa 2005, in case you're wondering) every single day before naptime. Obviously it was an extra- special day to watch it because Sam is not wearing pants and I am wearing my very festive Hannukah socks.


Day Twelve:
Go to Kids-n-Play. This is an indoor playground/bouncy house place here in town and this was basically our One Big Thing to do on the Advent calendar. Sadly, we didn't go because the Preschool Plague really kicked into full gear that day and my mother-in-law went back home. So we did... nothing. Well, we did laundry and vacuumed the floors. We also hugged on Odie.

"Hugged" (it's a relative term)

We ate some questionable food.

We took a fairly civilized bath.

And we went the eff to bed.

Day Thirteen:
Eat a snowball.

Yes folks, my child is probably the only child in the history of the world who refuses to even TRY ice cream. Even his favorite girlfriend tried spooning it into his mouth and he wouldn't have it. I brought the stupid dessert home and got on the floor trying to show him how delicious it was. He would pretend to be interested and then..... "no." (*pulls hair directly out of head and throws it into the trash, along with uneaten ice cream*)

Luckily, we went to Chick-fil-A on some school spirit night when no employees were working and a kid who appeared to be four years old with a wicked bad case of tantrums and a mother who seemed content to let him screech like a howler monkey while yelling at him to stop was the party atmosphere that we went inside for. DRIVE-THRU ALL THE WAY NEXT TIME. Sarah is such a saint to come with us. A SAINT. I feel like I currently possess tiny little shreds of sanity. But if she didn't come with us on our outings, I would have.... even less? The thought alone makes me shudder.

Day Fourteen:
Visit Santa. AKA: The moment you've all been waiting for. But first, let's revisit last year's trip to see Santa, shall we?

Those were fun times, huh? Let's see how Molly fared with her first sit on Santa's lap.

Looks confused. They continue to snap photos while I attempt to grab Sam.

Molly: Brother looks nervous should I be toooooo??? Santa: Aww, shiiiiiiiit. Not another screamer.

Yeeeah, there's the money shot. It's a shame I've already sent out my Christmas cards.

Stay tuned as we blaze right on into Week Three. It's nonstop fun around here, I tell ya. Nonstop.