Advent Calendar, Clementines and My Crazy Boy

Every December we look forward to getting out our Advent Calendar (from my parents a few years ago) to continue the tradition of doing that with the kiddos. And every year they get more and more excited than the previous year so it's a lot of fun to watch! The one we have is by Noel Piper of Desiring God Ministries and we love it. It comes with a read along guide, so every day you read up to the current day, and put on the piece for that date. On Dec. 25th the story concludes with the birth of Baby Jesus! Today we read the first section of the story for Dec. 1st and now the manger is on the calendar. The kids learn self control since they want to put all the pieces on right away!

Here's our calendar ...


Something else the kids love about this time of the year is ...



CLEMENTINES!!!!
I think they would eat 3 at each meal if I let them!

Then there's my crazy little boy ... always trying to keep life exciting! Yesterday he decided not to take a nap ... so after a couple hours of hearing him kick his wall, sing and talk to himself I decided to let him play in his room for a little. I've pretty much "Justin-proofed" his room, so I figured it'd be alright. I guess I should've known better ... shortly after Sydney got up from her afternoon nap she was crawling back the hallway where she heard Justin. They were "talking" to each other under the door ... then I heard Justin say to Sydney "here you go, Sydney" and throw something under the door. Knowing that only small things fit under the door, I figured I better go see what he gave her. And it's a good thing I did, since he was sliding pieces of his broken candle window bulb under the door to her. Thankfully I got to Sydney before she put it in her mouth ... she was just getting ready to. And I'm also thankful that Justin and Sydney didn't get hurt by touching the broken pieces. It's a good thing it isn't sharp glass. So after putting Sydney in the walker where she would stay out of trouble, I ventured into Justin's room to find ....





Seeing the mess he made was no surprise (although taking the bins off the holder and flipping that over was a little over the top!) ... although I could have done without the broken candle bulb which meant that there were pieces of glass scattered all over his room. Cleaning up the toys didn't take long (thus the reason I was ok letting him play in his room) ... but it did take awhile to clean up all the glass. But hey ... those candles have been up since Thanksgiving day, which means he went an entire 8 days (ok so actually only 5 since we were away for 3!!) without breaking his candle or bulb. And this is an improvement over last year since he broke 2 actual window candles AND the bulbs!!! I was happy that his candle was still in tact sitting on his windowsil. It was another opportunity for me to thank God for protecting my son amidst what could have been a much worse situation.

So that's all that we've been up to lately!