Advent Calendars

Last Friday, I bought the kids advent calendars to help countdown to Christmas. I bought one last year for Ellie but it wasn't as big of a hit as it has been so far this year. I bought two regular calendars for each of the kids for us to do in the morning before Daniel goes off to school and then we have a house advent that we do right before bed time. It is becoming a fun little tradition for us.

Here are dad and the kids looking for the number 4 window to open.
Ellie found it and now she's opening it up to get her chocolate.
This is Ellie's advent calendar.

And this is Owen's advent calendar. Owen eats his chocolate about every other time. The other times he drops it and Ellie scoops it up and eats it.

Here is our house advent. This one is actually pretty nice. The candies are of good quality and they are all different sizes, so this one is especially fun. So, yes, we are hyping up our children on chocolate first thing in the morning and right before bed... goooooood parenting:)! Oh well, I am justifying it because I was pretty good about not letting her have too much Halloween candy.

Later today, the kids and I are going to make sugar cookies. I bought some Christmas cookie cutters awhile back so we are anxious to use them and to decorate.

We bought a tree last night (pictures will be forthcoming after we decorate) for our Family Home Evening. We went to Hobby Lobby and decided we could not afford the one we REALLY wanted so we bought a 4.5 foot tree and got it for only $5! Such a killer deal. We figure that when we can afford something better we won't be too sad to chuck this one. For now, I think this will be perfect. I think we will try to keep it on the coffee table to stay out of reach of #2 (and #1 for that matter). We will see how that goes. Today it is sitting up on the table naked so the kids don't have ornaments or flashing lights to attract them to it. We'll see if they can stay away from it!