Instead of bringing back Friday Favorites for a few weeks to talk about the antics of Kenny the Elf and our Advent activities, Steven and I decided we would institute a series called "Sunday Funday"... because we are ridiculous like that. So, each week until Christmas (when Kenny returns to the North Pole and the Advent Activities are over for the year), we will recap what we have done for the week in this post. Fair warning: Most weeks might be pic heavy but I will try to keep it in check.
Kenny returned on December 1st this year. Thanksgiving was just so early this year but we wanted to wait for December because he also brings out Advent activities each day and we only have so many before we either run out or I have to start instituting random "Christmas Craft" days. Haha!
On Kenny's first day back he decided to bring out a string of lights and make himself a runway. He borrowed Will's plane to fly in and announce his return. Will noticed him immediately when he woke up and we had to have a talk about not touching him and why. I don't think he totally understood but he seems to know he is off limits. Though, I think Kenny will hang out in places that are out of reach most of this season. Kenzie came out of her room still tired and had to be guided towards him before she noticed. Once she did, she was crazy excited. She remembered him immediately and got started telling Will why he couldn't touch him. We are going to drill that concept into the poor kid. Our activity for the day was to go pick out our annual ornaments.
We were able to meet up with Daddy after work at Hobby Lobby where the choice of ornaments is spectacular. The kids have been eyeing them for a month or more already anyway. Kenzie knew right where she wanted to go and that was the section of ballerinas. She wanted a ballet dancer like herself and her dance teacher (who does actually dance professionally). The only problem we had was that there was a large selection of ballet dancer options. And our lovely 4-year-old in all her 4-year-old glory just couldn't decide which one was the best. We finally had to choose two options for her and after much debating, she chose one of those. Will was a bit easier. He initially walked by a dump truck with presents in it and wanted that but then he honed in on a train. It is actually the ornament he always noticed when we went in. We did the same with him and asked him which of the two he wanted. He chose the train... not at all to our surprise.
On Day 2, our activity was to go pick out our tree. So, Kenny brought in a new tree for Will with the help of a John Deere tractor and also dug up Kenzie's tree from the boxes outside since we haven't unloaded them to decorate the house yet. (That's next week's activity.)We did notice that the tree he picked up for Will is a lot smaller than Kenzie's. Oops. This year that won't matter but we might actually invest in a new one again next year and keep this one as our own. Will may never care... but we will see. Both kids were super excited for their trees.
As for picking out a tree, we hit a few roadblocks. I will save everyone the long version of the story and just say that Lowes lost a customer as far as buying a Christmas tree goes. It was a serious lack of customer service and we have seen it going down hill each year. This one just took the cake. We still love Lowes and usually have no issues, but we will take our Christmas tree purchases elsewhere from now on. We ended up across the street at Home Depot. We had a great experience and ended up with the first tree we opened. Just for kicks, we opened one other one, but ended up going back to our first. That's actually pretty typical for us. We usually end up with the first one we open. I guess we just get lucky. When we got it home, we put it in a bucket of water on our front entryway and we wondered if we would have to trim it some to get it in the house. We bought a 7-8 foot but we only have 8 foot ceilings. (Sidenote: I made Naughty and Nice hats for the kids to wear during some of our activities this year. They are so cute in them. Although now we think we should have made a Naughty and a Naughty Squared or something. Seems more appropriate.)
Apparently on Day 3, Kenny was feeling a bit homesick so he went to hang out in the fridge. He decided to help himself to some fresh clementine juice too. The only reason he was found (we all went out on a Kenny hunt together) was because he also left the kids their annual Christmas season shirts and there was a note telling them to check the fridge. Both kids just kept saying, "Kenny is so silly!" or "What a silly elf!" It was adorable. Our activity for the day was to go to Celebration Snow. We have done this 4 years in a row now and love it.
We ended up planning it out with our neighbors to meet down there. We went down early with one set of neighbors and their little girl so we could have pizza before the snowfall. There is a tiny hole in the wall pizza place right in front of where it snows so that worked out really well. We were early enough to get a few tables and just enough chairs too. We have decided that four is a good number of people in our family. Any more and we would have to buy another pizza. We polished off a 14" pizza and 6 garlic knots like it was nothing. Each kid had to have 2 pieces. Well, Kenzie ate 1.5 but Will certainly ate 2. She probably would have eaten more but she loves to share her food with Daddy. We finished up dinner right on time. Our other neighbors and their 3 girls met us right as the snow was set to start. In past years, Kenzie enjoyed the snow but didn't really play in it. That all changed this year. We aren't quite sure what came over her but it wasn't long before she was in it. And I mean IN IT. The put extra foam on the ground in addition to what comes out of the machines and she decided that making snow angels was totally necessary. Then she chased the rest of us around trying to get snow on us. Later she told us that since we weren't covered in snow (like her), we weren't playing enough. Will initially was sort of concerned with the idea of snow but eventually was "skating" around in it and had a blast running after his sister. It just tends to take him a few extra minutes to warm up to thing sometimes. When the snow ended we went over to where the horse and carriages are and the kids all pet the horses that were waiting to do their next rides.Except Will. Apparently we didn't have quite enough time for him to warm up to the idea of touching what must have looked like a 6 foot tall dog. After all that fun, we changed Kenzie into the pjs we brought because she was soaked and headed over to the Lights at Jeater Bend. (I'm mentioning this because you may notice that she is walking around in pjs. It is what it is.) We went to this area last year. This street has 11 houses that sync their lights up to music and have snow, fire, and water fountains. It is quite impressive. They were actually on the show The Great Christmas Light Fight last year. Spoiler Alert: They didn't win but they are still super impressive. If I recall, one of the homeowners works for Disney and another may work for Universal so this all makes sense. Plus, Celebration is sometimes called "The Town that Disney Built" and you can totally see that when you look at this street. The Disney magic is alive and well. The kids all loved it. They actually sat and watching singing presents for a good 5 minutes. Just sat there enthralled. It was weird. I'm tempted to go back down there and ask the homeowners where they got those. They were so enthused, I'm wondering if it might keep them busy for a while. We walked up and down the street before heading home. We even lucked out and Anna, Elsa, and Olaf made an appearance at the main house. Kenzie was so excited. Will... not as much. He has an issue with face characters still. If it had been just Olaf, he might have been into it. Either way, Kenzie was one excited kid. This is definitely one of our favorite traditions each year. We are loving watching the kids get more and more into some of these things too as the years go on. It's crazy to think that the first time we went, we only had a 16 or so month old Kenzie. Now, we have 2 littles running around causing craziness around them. They loved every minute of it. They were so hyped up that neither one of them fell asleep on the way home. Though, they both crashed as soon as we put them in bed at home.
On Day 4, Kenny took it upon himself to use Kenzie's smores kit her teachers gave her before Thanksgiving. Don't worry. He left a note telling her that he was leaving her the treats for the next day. The only downfall to this set up was the fact that I had to set an alarm to get up early before the kids and help Kenny turn on his campfire (battery powered candle) because it wouldn't have lasted all night. Our activity of the day was to turn on some Christmas music and decorate our tree.
Decorating the tree is one of my favorite things to do as a family. It is just us and we open each ornament and (with the exception of the bulbs) talk about where it came from. Some are from trips we have taken. Some are from trips others have taken and brought to us. Some are special ones we made to signify important events in our lives (like, my favorites, the bulbs with the kids' hospital hats and bracelets in them). It is so much fun to tell the kids about them each year. They also get to see the ornaments they picked out in past years which is a lot of fun for them. It's also fun to see how their likes have changed (or stayed the same) year after year based on the ornament they chose. Plus, having a fully lit and decorated tree to look at each day makes it really feel like Christmas around here. Too bad I'm so congested that I can't smell it. I'm sure that is wonderful, too. =) It turns out that we had to cut about 9 inches off the top of the tree to get it to stand up but it ended up perfect for our angel at the top. The kids were so excited to get ornaments on it. I had to do the lights twice because I overestimated what I might need the first time and had way too much left over in a weird way that couldn't just be strung back down the tree. Once we had that done though, we got to work. Hanging ornaments with 2 kids is way different than it was in years past with just 1. This was the first year that Will participated as he didn't walk until Christmas Day last year so he just sat there and took them out of boxes. This year they were taking them from Daddy as fast as he could unwrap them and running them to me. At some point I realized all of them were in a cluster not only from them hanging them on their level, but from me taking them and hanging them but it going so fast at times that I didn't have time to move around the tree. We spent some time talking about the important ones we have. The kids were most excited with the ornaments from their births and the ones made from pieces of their first trees the year they were born. Plus, there ones chosen in year's past. We aren't 100% done with the tree yet as we will add tinsel once the the limbs finish falling down some and we have to move some ornaments once that happens. Also, we have to add the train. Will got so excited when he saw the track though that he might just take it upon himself to finish that part for us. The kids had a blast. We also ended up setting up a smaller fake tree that was Steven's from before we were married in the kids' playroom. They love it. We are just going to use lights and garland on it but they like it because it is like it is theirs and you can see it if we leave the playroom window open. More than one tree is fun!
We also managed to get all of the lights on the outside of the house done this week and weekend. I think they turned out pretty fantastic. I will have to take a picture for next week's post.
This coming next week will bring some more fun activities and I think the entire family is going to enjoy them. Now, let's see if Kenny can keep up with his antics for another week before he starts phoning it in some. Haha!!
Kenny returned on December 1st this year. Thanksgiving was just so early this year but we wanted to wait for December because he also brings out Advent activities each day and we only have so many before we either run out or I have to start instituting random "Christmas Craft" days. Haha!
On Kenny's first day back he decided to bring out a string of lights and make himself a runway. He borrowed Will's plane to fly in and announce his return. Will noticed him immediately when he woke up and we had to have a talk about not touching him and why. I don't think he totally understood but he seems to know he is off limits. Though, I think Kenny will hang out in places that are out of reach most of this season. Kenzie came out of her room still tired and had to be guided towards him before she noticed. Once she did, she was crazy excited. She remembered him immediately and got started telling Will why he couldn't touch him. We are going to drill that concept into the poor kid. Our activity for the day was to go pick out our annual ornaments.
We were able to meet up with Daddy after work at Hobby Lobby where the choice of ornaments is spectacular. The kids have been eyeing them for a month or more already anyway. Kenzie knew right where she wanted to go and that was the section of ballerinas. She wanted a ballet dancer like herself and her dance teacher (who does actually dance professionally). The only problem we had was that there was a large selection of ballet dancer options. And our lovely 4-year-old in all her 4-year-old glory just couldn't decide which one was the best. We finally had to choose two options for her and after much debating, she chose one of those. Will was a bit easier. He initially walked by a dump truck with presents in it and wanted that but then he honed in on a train. It is actually the ornament he always noticed when we went in. We did the same with him and asked him which of the two he wanted. He chose the train... not at all to our surprise.
On Day 2, our activity was to go pick out our tree. So, Kenny brought in a new tree for Will with the help of a John Deere tractor and also dug up Kenzie's tree from the boxes outside since we haven't unloaded them to decorate the house yet. (That's next week's activity.)We did notice that the tree he picked up for Will is a lot smaller than Kenzie's. Oops. This year that won't matter but we might actually invest in a new one again next year and keep this one as our own. Will may never care... but we will see. Both kids were super excited for their trees.
As for picking out a tree, we hit a few roadblocks. I will save everyone the long version of the story and just say that Lowes lost a customer as far as buying a Christmas tree goes. It was a serious lack of customer service and we have seen it going down hill each year. This one just took the cake. We still love Lowes and usually have no issues, but we will take our Christmas tree purchases elsewhere from now on. We ended up across the street at Home Depot. We had a great experience and ended up with the first tree we opened. Just for kicks, we opened one other one, but ended up going back to our first. That's actually pretty typical for us. We usually end up with the first one we open. I guess we just get lucky. When we got it home, we put it in a bucket of water on our front entryway and we wondered if we would have to trim it some to get it in the house. We bought a 7-8 foot but we only have 8 foot ceilings. (Sidenote: I made Naughty and Nice hats for the kids to wear during some of our activities this year. They are so cute in them. Although now we think we should have made a Naughty and a Naughty Squared or something. Seems more appropriate.)
Apparently on Day 3, Kenny was feeling a bit homesick so he went to hang out in the fridge. He decided to help himself to some fresh clementine juice too. The only reason he was found (we all went out on a Kenny hunt together) was because he also left the kids their annual Christmas season shirts and there was a note telling them to check the fridge. Both kids just kept saying, "Kenny is so silly!" or "What a silly elf!" It was adorable. Our activity for the day was to go to Celebration Snow. We have done this 4 years in a row now and love it.
We ended up planning it out with our neighbors to meet down there. We went down early with one set of neighbors and their little girl so we could have pizza before the snowfall. There is a tiny hole in the wall pizza place right in front of where it snows so that worked out really well. We were early enough to get a few tables and just enough chairs too. We have decided that four is a good number of people in our family. Any more and we would have to buy another pizza. We polished off a 14" pizza and 6 garlic knots like it was nothing. Each kid had to have 2 pieces. Well, Kenzie ate 1.5 but Will certainly ate 2. She probably would have eaten more but she loves to share her food with Daddy. We finished up dinner right on time. Our other neighbors and their 3 girls met us right as the snow was set to start. In past years, Kenzie enjoyed the snow but didn't really play in it. That all changed this year. We aren't quite sure what came over her but it wasn't long before she was in it. And I mean IN IT. The put extra foam on the ground in addition to what comes out of the machines and she decided that making snow angels was totally necessary. Then she chased the rest of us around trying to get snow on us. Later she told us that since we weren't covered in snow (like her), we weren't playing enough. Will initially was sort of concerned with the idea of snow but eventually was "skating" around in it and had a blast running after his sister. It just tends to take him a few extra minutes to warm up to thing sometimes. When the snow ended we went over to where the horse and carriages are and the kids all pet the horses that were waiting to do their next rides.Except Will. Apparently we didn't have quite enough time for him to warm up to the idea of touching what must have looked like a 6 foot tall dog. After all that fun, we changed Kenzie into the pjs we brought because she was soaked and headed over to the Lights at Jeater Bend. (I'm mentioning this because you may notice that she is walking around in pjs. It is what it is.) We went to this area last year. This street has 11 houses that sync their lights up to music and have snow, fire, and water fountains. It is quite impressive. They were actually on the show The Great Christmas Light Fight last year. Spoiler Alert: They didn't win but they are still super impressive. If I recall, one of the homeowners works for Disney and another may work for Universal so this all makes sense. Plus, Celebration is sometimes called "The Town that Disney Built" and you can totally see that when you look at this street. The Disney magic is alive and well. The kids all loved it. They actually sat and watching singing presents for a good 5 minutes. Just sat there enthralled. It was weird. I'm tempted to go back down there and ask the homeowners where they got those. They were so enthused, I'm wondering if it might keep them busy for a while. We walked up and down the street before heading home. We even lucked out and Anna, Elsa, and Olaf made an appearance at the main house. Kenzie was so excited. Will... not as much. He has an issue with face characters still. If it had been just Olaf, he might have been into it. Either way, Kenzie was one excited kid. This is definitely one of our favorite traditions each year. We are loving watching the kids get more and more into some of these things too as the years go on. It's crazy to think that the first time we went, we only had a 16 or so month old Kenzie. Now, we have 2 littles running around causing craziness around them. They loved every minute of it. They were so hyped up that neither one of them fell asleep on the way home. Though, they both crashed as soon as we put them in bed at home.
On Day 4, Kenny took it upon himself to use Kenzie's smores kit her teachers gave her before Thanksgiving. Don't worry. He left a note telling her that he was leaving her the treats for the next day. The only downfall to this set up was the fact that I had to set an alarm to get up early before the kids and help Kenny turn on his campfire (battery powered candle) because it wouldn't have lasted all night. Our activity of the day was to turn on some Christmas music and decorate our tree.
Decorating the tree is one of my favorite things to do as a family. It is just us and we open each ornament and (with the exception of the bulbs) talk about where it came from. Some are from trips we have taken. Some are from trips others have taken and brought to us. Some are special ones we made to signify important events in our lives (like, my favorites, the bulbs with the kids' hospital hats and bracelets in them). It is so much fun to tell the kids about them each year. They also get to see the ornaments they picked out in past years which is a lot of fun for them. It's also fun to see how their likes have changed (or stayed the same) year after year based on the ornament they chose. Plus, having a fully lit and decorated tree to look at each day makes it really feel like Christmas around here. Too bad I'm so congested that I can't smell it. I'm sure that is wonderful, too. =) It turns out that we had to cut about 9 inches off the top of the tree to get it to stand up but it ended up perfect for our angel at the top. The kids were so excited to get ornaments on it. I had to do the lights twice because I overestimated what I might need the first time and had way too much left over in a weird way that couldn't just be strung back down the tree. Once we had that done though, we got to work. Hanging ornaments with 2 kids is way different than it was in years past with just 1. This was the first year that Will participated as he didn't walk until Christmas Day last year so he just sat there and took them out of boxes. This year they were taking them from Daddy as fast as he could unwrap them and running them to me. At some point I realized all of them were in a cluster not only from them hanging them on their level, but from me taking them and hanging them but it going so fast at times that I didn't have time to move around the tree. We spent some time talking about the important ones we have. The kids were most excited with the ornaments from their births and the ones made from pieces of their first trees the year they were born. Plus, there ones chosen in year's past. We aren't 100% done with the tree yet as we will add tinsel once the the limbs finish falling down some and we have to move some ornaments once that happens. Also, we have to add the train. Will got so excited when he saw the track though that he might just take it upon himself to finish that part for us. The kids had a blast. We also ended up setting up a smaller fake tree that was Steven's from before we were married in the kids' playroom. They love it. We are just going to use lights and garland on it but they like it because it is like it is theirs and you can see it if we leave the playroom window open. More than one tree is fun!
We also managed to get all of the lights on the outside of the house done this week and weekend. I think they turned out pretty fantastic. I will have to take a picture for next week's post.
This coming next week will bring some more fun activities and I think the entire family is going to enjoy them. Now, let's see if Kenny can keep up with his antics for another week before he starts phoning it in some. Haha!!
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