Activity Advent Day 7

Today's activity was painting nails. Daddy was not happy with this activity and has made it very clear that from now on he gets to approve all activities prior to being put into the envelopes. He was a good sport though and allowed us to paint 3 of his toenails. No more. My intention was to paint our toes with Christmas colors; however, the only colors my girls were interested in were pink and purple. Curly wanted everyone to have purple toes and pink fingers. The Bear wanted the opposite.

Sweet Daddy painting his baby's toes pink

The Bear's purple fingers and pink toes

Curly's pink fingers and purple toes

The whole family

Activity Advent Day 6

Today we wrote letters to Santa. Curly was very excited to write her own letter. Daddy sat helped her spell the words as she wrote. The Bear tried to draw pictures of what she wanted but ultimately asked me to write it down for her.

Writing her letter

It's hard to read but The Bear wants a unicorn pillow pet, bugs, art supplies, a bee and a Ho Ho toy (she calls Santa Ho Ho). Curly wants a pink cat pillow pet, garden tools, the princesses princes and a Santa toy.

Ready for Santa

Ready for Ho Ho

Activity Advent Day 4 and 5

As you can tell, I didn't post an activity yesterday. We had an activity planned; however, on Friday night my sweet friend, Stacy, called and let me know she had an extra ticket to the SEC Championship and it was all mine if I wanted it. I was speechless. I was excited. And I was totally GOING!!!! Woo Hoo! Daddy unfortunately had finals on Saturday and would actually miss the first quarter of the game. Aunt Jenna agreed to watch the girls until Daddy got home from school. Thank you Aunt Jenna! So our scheduled advent activity was cancelled. The girls had a blast with Aunt Jenna. Daddy did awesome on his final. I had amazing seats at an amazing game with my amazingly generous friends. I had a great time and am so excited my much loved Auburn Tigers are headed to the BCS Championship game in Arizona. Our plane tickets are all booked. We don't have tickets but we are looking, hoping and praying we will get tickets by game time.

Our advent activity for today was Christmas Packages at JFBC. It's basically a Christmas festival with a live nativity, carolers, plays, games, food, carriage rides, etc.... Curly and the Children's Choir performed 4 songs on stage in the gym. Curly LOVES being on stage and performing. She had a great time. Today was freezing so the events outside were coooooold but fun. The Bear is an animal lover so she LOVED the live nativity and all the animals to pet.

JFBC Children's Choir

Never Too Old

Today you could say our family Advent activity was kind of a cop-out. We went out for pizza as a family. I knew ahead of time that today was going to be a busy day for the girls and I so I purposefully made this our activity. I did not take pictures of dinner. I promise we were all there and it was yummy.

There was a part of our Oklahoma trip I failed to mention before. We visited the local library's fabulously fun new playground. Everyone got in on the fun. Big, small, tall, short, old and young all joined in the fun. I guess you are never too old to play on a playground. Thankfully I had my camera to capture all the fun ;0).

All bundled up to go play

Papa pushing The Bear

Aunt Lauren down the long and twisty tube side

Curly came next

Aunt Katie's turn

The Bear loved sliding down with Uncle Luke

Not so much sliding down with Gran

Pulling Lauren out

A proud dad pushing his 27 yr old daughter on the swing

Weeeeeeee!!!!

Big Brother's turn to push little sister

Daddy swinging with his Little Bear

Activity Advent Day 2

Today was Daddy's birthday. Unfortunately he had to work and then he had a final exam in his hardest class tonight. Major bummer. I am happy to report though, that he aced his final! Woo Hoo! So today our activity was to make homemade birthday cards and Christmas decorations for his office. The girls loved it. Hopefully Daddy will too.

The Set Up

The Bear hard at work

Some of the finished trees

Advent Activity Calendar

Two years ago my sweet friend, Emily, made us a family advent activity calendar. It's 24 small decorative envelopes filled with a fun family activity for each day. It's simple activities but presented in a fun way for the kids. I'm hoping to put up a simple blog each day of our activity. I may miss a few but hopefully I'll catch most of them. Today was our first activity. We brought out The Elf On The Shelf for the girls. The first part of the story says that we as a family must name our elf from Santa. Our elf was given the unique name of Elfy. The story behind the Elf is that he is sent here from Santa to watch our kids and see if they are being naughty or nice. Each night he goes to the North Pole to report to Santa any good or bad things they did. Then he returns before they wake up each morning. He moves around the house to different places. Each morning it's a game to find him around the house. His only rule is you cannot touch him or he may lose his Elf magic. Elfy seems to be a hit so far. Hopefully he works at keeping our two little girls on the nice list.

Okie Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we drove out to Oklahoma to spend Thanksgiving with Gran's family. We broke the trip up into two days for Curly and The Bear. They did well with the drive but I was definitely reminded why I loathe long car rides and if economically possible would prefer to fly. Prior to leaving home we warned the girls that we would be in the car for a long long time and they needed to just sit back and enjoy all the wonderful movies we were bringing for them to watch. We made it about an hour before Curly asked if we were at the hotel yet. Actually she said " Are we at the woo-tel yet". Just call her Curly-lou-woo from Woosville. It's fitting for the season.

On Wednesday we got to Oklahoma, where the wind sweeps cars right off the road. Or, Oklahoma, where the toll roads will make you go broke. Just kidding but not really, the wind and tolls are no joke in that state. We stayed with Aunt Debbie for the three nights we were in town. We had a wonderful time catching up with our Oklahoma family. Friday was the Auburn/Alabama game as well as the Tulsa game. Daddy's cousin Tyler works for The University of Tulsa and got us football tickets to the Southern Miss vs Tulsa game that evening. We all watched the first half of the Auburn game before we had to leave for the Tulsa game. That was NOT the half to watch. It was actually quite depressing. Tyler showed us around the Case Athletic Complex where he works. All the coaches offices were in there and they all had big TVs in their offices. Many had the Auburn game on so some of us (not me because I was a nervous wreck) watched the last quarter of the Auburn game. This was definitely the one to watch because we WON! Woo Hoo! The bliss of our victory made watching the Tulsa game even more fun. Tyler was able to secure some sweet sideline passes for Daddy and Luke. The rest of us sat around the 40 yard line. Not too shabby. Tulsa prevailed beating Southern Miss in a shoot out.

Sadly on Saturday we left our Okie family and drove through many a toll booths on our way home. It felt good to finally get home on Sunday. We've all been catching up on our sleep the last couple of days. Enjoy the pictures from our trip.

Our Family on Thanksgiving

The whole family on Thanksgiving

Meeting new cousin Piper

Riding down to check out the lake

The Bear's happy place, Papa's shoulder.

Us with Tyler before the Tulsa game

The whole gameday crew

Celebrating the Auburn victory at the Tulsa game