Advent Calendar - Week 3

Christmas Eve!  Where oh where did the last three weeks go??

This week was rather full on seeing as I had both boys home on holiday for most of it.

8 more sleeps - Wrap presents. 

Boy oh boy first and last time that will be included as an activity!!  I have somehow managed not to rewrap any of them.

7 more sleeps - Gingerbread house that turned out being houses!

The dough just kept coming!

Chief decorators

Crazy 2's finished house

Crazy 1's masterpiece

6 more sleeps - paint stone people

This was GREAT.  We were at the beach by 9.00am running in the waves and collecting stones.  There was some serious concentrating going on.

Crazy 2's stone man, including hair on top.

Crazy 1's angry Ben10 - just turn your head upside down!!
Green mouth, orange eyes and blue eye brows! :)

5 more sleeps - Hmmmmm this was supposed to be choose a new plant for the garden and keep it alive!  But seeing as I am in a capsicum growing competition at work I thought perhaps just focus on one plant!  So this ended up being go to Pop's work to get his ute and tidy up our backyard.  The boys thought it was SO COOL driving Pop's ute.

4 more sleeps - Christmas lights. 

3 more sleeps - Gifts for neighbours

Seeing as this was pretty simple and it was a stinking hot day, it ended up involving this as well.......

Slip'n'Slide has improved somewhat since
I was a kid!





2 more sleeps - picnic lunch at the park and feeding the ducks

1 more sleep - treasure hunt

Armed with maps and ready.  We were heading for the jungle with guns, ammo, a mud hole, mountains and swamp creek

The anticipation was killing this one!

Jungle boots and ammo to fend of the lions and tigers and bears.

Keeping their eyes peeled for lions and birds.

Our look out

Climbing the mountain

Balancing over the mud swamp

That has been our December so far!  We are super excited to celebrate Christs birth tomorrow with our families.

Have a wonderful Christmas and we wish you many blessings for the New Year.

Love The Wards xox

Advent Calendar - Week 2

What a week!  Last day of school - only home 2 out of the 5 weeknights.  We are stuffed!!!!!

In terms of what did we do for the advent calendar this week??? 

This was the original plan (in order):

Teacher gifts
Dance party
Lollies
Bake and decorate cookies
Feed the ducks at Cornwall park
Sleepover at Nan and Pops
Fish & Chips at the beach

This is how the week unfolded for the boys

15 more sleeps - Play date with neighbours kids and Mum did the teacher gifts

14 more sleeps - Mum had the dance party on her own, the boys just wanted to ride their bikes

13 more sleeps - Lollies (and last day of school)

12 more sleeps - Splash pad at Cornwall park and Mum baked the cookies by herself!

I am positive there are six packs in there
somewhere!  Fine physique those two have!

11 more sleeps - Dinner at friends house

10 more sleeps - sleepover at Nan and Pops (as IF this one was going to be changed!)

9 more sleeps - RELAX and TV afternoon (super tired family)

Looking forward to this weeks tasks.

The Advent Calendar Week

So the first week of December has been and gone - WOW.  On the 1st of December I changed our calendar over and saw we only had 1 thing booked (and it was on the 2nd!)  STOKED!  A week later and I think we have 1 or 2 nights free! :)  Not complaining though - its just that type of season.

This is what we have been up to this week

24 more sleeps - Christmas tree time

23 more sleeps - Christmas bubble bath

I was hoping that the bubbles would be slightly
green, but NOPE

Someone thought it would be good to clean
out his nostrils

And yet after Mum explaining no not a good idea
just had to try it out anyway

 22 more sleeps - colour in the nativity scene

So much concentration - so much PEACE

 21 more sleeps - LOLLIES, Riley had an all day field trip to the fire station and then the Haumoana Zoo so thought this was an easy way out of having to do something to strenuous

20 more sleeps - picnic dinner.  This was obviously supposed to be outside but it started to rain just as we were about to start.  So picnic blanket on the floor in the lounge, with paninis, chips, and Fanta (the boys favourite), followed by chocolate dipped strawberries.

19 more sleeps - special treat.  We went to The Warehouse and the boys were allowed to choose a special treat - NEVER EVER EVER AGAIN!  45 mins later I was about to throw a tantrum!

18 more sleeps - movie night with popcorn

17 more sleeps - Aunty Lee Lee and Uncle Phils wedding (the best event yet for them).  They danced the night away till 10pm!

16 more sleeps - McD's for lunch in the new Havelock shop

Will post more next week :)

Easy Peasy Christmas Crafts

As per the post below, today has all been about decorating for Christmas.  Its been a fun but also challenging day, but thats a whole nother blog post!

I just wanted to show you some easy, cheap and chips decorating I have done - so far.

I have had this wreath sitting around for donkeys yonks!  It is a polystyrene wreath which I wrapped thick natural cord around.  Then I hot glued on some green leaves, and faux red carnation flowers - all up maybe $10.  I love it so much it may become a permanent fixture.

Yes the flowers are on one side, not in the middle at the bottom.
I thought if they were on the side then it wouldn't bug me
if it wasn't perfectly centre!  Rather genius I think!

This is a work in progress as a table centrepiece.  If/when it gets finished they will be on a long white, skinny platter with holly or red berries around them.  3 white candles with 3 stripes of green and white washi tape.  All up maybe $4 (excluding the $6 for the tape but you get 10m!)


Simple yet effective

 Have more plans and ideas, but I guess watch this space to see if they eventuate!

Let the advent calendar begin.........

December!  How on earth can it be December already.  Isn't it funny how as you get older time seems to speed up.  I remember as a kid and teen at school that the year D  R  A  G  G  E  D on, yet now if you blink you may just miss it (well not really but some days it seems like that!)

Once again this year I have done an advent activity calendar for the boys rather than buying the chocolate filled store ones.  I had a friend comment recently 'I don't understand the reason for advent calendars - is it to get kids/adults excited for Christmas??'  I don't know the reason really.  In our house I guess it is.  I WANT my family to be excited about Christmas - not for the hype, food, presents or family gatherings, but for the REAL reason behind it - JESUS CHRIST our LORD and SAVIOUR, and the fact that GOD sent him to earth to teach us, guide us and eventually die for our sins so we can be saved and live for eternity with him.

I don't want to justify my reason for doing a calendar but I must say it is a pretty good, in-your-face way to be reminded of Christ daily.

Right that's my rant over, onto the calendar.

I have been searching for weeks on a great way to assemble the calendar but couldn't find anything that jumped out at me.  So we opted for some ribbon, cards, washi tape and hand writing!

Yes that's 1 more sleep at the beginning - the boys helped and I am trying
with all my might not to change it all! :)

Hopefully more creative next year

Attempt at getting a nice photo - hopeless in this house! 
Gave up after 1st attempt

This is the boys tree, I told them I would put the lights on and then
it was all over to them, they could decorate it as they liked
AND NO I WONT CHANGE ANY OF IT.
They think it's awesome so I am happy!

Busy beavers!

The end result - a blind man would be happy!
This is their tree to put their school, kindy and Sunday School
creations on

Will keep you posted on the other antics we get up to.  Just won't promise to do it every day as I know I wont! :)  Maybe a recap of the week

Prepping for Christmas

I have an unbelievably unwell child today, so I'm taking the opportunity of not being able to go too far from him (vomiting bug) to get myself organised for Christmas. 

For the last few years I have done an advent calendar for the boys.  I refuse to buy those chocolate filled ones, but rather make my own and include fun things to do.  So that is the list I have made today........

1. Put up Christmas tree
2. Make a Christmas craft
3. Make and decorate cookies
4. Movie night
5. Choose a special treat (usually a trip to $2 store)
6. Out for dinner (guarantee it will be McD's!)
7. Fish & Chips at the beach
8. Make a gift for the teachers
9. Make a snowglobe
10. Write Christmas cards
11. Decorate a gingerbread house (wondering if I attempt to bake the house?!?!?!)
12. Camp out
13. Make presents for neighbours
14. Visit the Christmas light
15. Wrap Christmas gifts
16. Lolly scramble
17. Treasure hunt
18. Choose and plant a new plant
19. Colourful bubble bath
20. Picnic dinner
21. New toy
22. Christmas carol jam session (Christmas carols are cranked up high and we drum away on Tupperware containers or play air guitars)

At the moment I can only think of 22 so the other 2 might just be lollies in a bag.  Then on Christmas day their activity is to jump into bed with us to read the Christmas story with milky milos.

Some of the things are pretty basic, but they are all things our kids love doing.  They are always excited to open their envelopes.

Crumbs now I am super excited.

Super

School holiday magic

For the first time in my kids kindy/school lives I nearly cried when I dropped them off on their first day back this term.  It was hideous!

O.k. so I think I was in the throws of a mid-mid-thirties crisis at the time, but we had also just enjoyed 2 weeks holiday - no routine, movie days, new activities and Mr W took pretty much the whole second week off work!

I struggle big time, to understand parents who moan about the holidays, or break out in a cold sweat.  If I'm organised I love them.  To be organised I plan a list of things to do.

Here's what we did this time round;

Catch up with Crazy 1's kindy friends
Family fun at Nan and Pops farm with the cuzzies
Library books (including Crazy 1's first chapter book - he was pretty stoked!)
Movie day
Mum in bed for 2 days with Laryngitis - O.k. for me this wasn't fun, but the boys thought it was great as I couldn't yell at them!!
Stone throwing at the beach
Playgrounds
Picnic lunches
Changing rooms
Visiting more cuzzies and getting 'WAY COOL' soccer shirts
Fishing off the wharf
Two nights at Nan and Pops

So stoked

Great Grandad passing on his fishing wisdom

Being towed around the farm

Figuring out better ways to sleep

Sometimes I wonder

why I bother tucking this one in at night.............

SERIOUSLY

Family Photo Shoot

We had our family photos done this year through a school fundraiser.  Here are some of the outtakes of the boys together - IDIOTS!

The photographer kept making farting noises which they of course LOVED!

Then finally there was a good one!