Well, this was our fourth and final week of Christmas Advent Activities and Kenny. He left on Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve for another 11 months. I think the kids loved having him around this year. Honestly, I don't think I am going to miss him right away. ;)
On Day 19, Kenny borrowed Kenzie's tap shoes. We think he did it because Kenzie had her dance recital that night and he wanted to get in on the action, too. Thankfully, she no longer uses her tap shoes this year as she does ballet and jazz so we didn't have to try to remove him from the shoes.
We actually didn't have an activity for the day because of Kenzie's recital. That was technically our activity for the day. This year her teacher chose a jazz routine for the holiday recital. This is a much more low key recital than the end of the year one. That is a huge production, but this is just a recital at the studio during dance time. The parents, family, and friends that attend go into the studio itself (instead of in the viewing area) to watch an abridged class. This is a way to show off how they teach dance and what the kids are learning. Though for the parents that are usually there, it is nothing new because we have a viewing area anyway. Then we all leave and go to the largest room the dance studio has with the parents, families, and friends of all the other kids that have dance at the same time as Kenzie and each class comes in one at a time and performs for everyone. I think this year they actually split the rooms because some of the other groups mentioned going to another studio to dance, too. Kenzie's class danced to a song by Aly and AJ. I didn't know who that was until I googled it to try to find the song for her to practice at home. It is an upbeat Christmas song and it is forever stuck in my head on Monday nights and Tuesdays after dance. Like I said, this was a jazz number. It is similar (and yet so different) to ballet which is what her prior teacher typically focused on as she was mainly a ballet dancer herself. Her current teacher is more jazz so she focuses more on that. Kenzie has told us how much she has enjoyed doing jazz this year though. We figure she will continue to want to do jazz next year (as opposed to tap but either would be combined with ballet). After that, she can decide if she wants to go to just one style or another. They do combo classes until about 7-years-old. Maybe 8 but Kenzie is probably one of (if not THE) youngest in the class so she will move on a bit earlier than some kiddos. Her teacher also showed all of us the costume for the end of the year recital. It is super cute. The girls apparently requested no pink. And she played the song for us. It is an upbeat jazz style song. She said there will be some surfing. I'm not sure what that means... but Kenzie is excited.
On Day 20, Kenny was found hanging out near the manger scene. Kenzie exclaimed, "Mommy! Look at Kenny! He is bowing before Jesus!" The kids were so excited. We talked about how the Bible says that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. We talked about the real reason we celebrate Christmas.
Our activity for the day was making Reindeer Food. Before we did that though, we went over to Mt. Dora to mail letters to Santa. We decided to hold off on having Kenny deliver them and the kids were able to drop them in the mailbox we saw in Downtown Mt. Dora a couple of weeks ago. When we got home, we got to working on making Reindeer Food. This is a super simple project we have done year after year that the kids enjoy. We always make a bag for each of them and two extras for our neighbors. We went over to deliver them but then we had to get home to make dinner because Kenzie and I had Girl Scouts that night.
On Day 21, Kenny decided to hang out in the little tree in the playroom. The kids thought that was hilarious for some reason. Nothing major but I really like that they are still easily amused.
Our activity was to have hot chocolate or chocolate milk and watch a Christmas movie. The kids chose Frosty the Snowman. That seems to be their favorite Christmas movie as they request it all year long and love when we get to this day in our activities. Kenzie had some chocolate milk but Will chose white milk. He doesn't seem to like chocolate milk. I remember thinking as a kid how long these movies were but now as an adult, they are perfect. Just under a half hour so we can get them done before bedtime.
On Day 22, the kids took forever to find Kenny. That was because he was busy hanging out in the fridge. Our weather lately has been hitting over 80 degrees so I guess he was just done with that. The kids noticed him when I opened the fridge to get started with breakfast. They thought it was hilarious but I was given a firm talking to about not touching him when I went in the fridge.
Our activity of the day was to watch another Christmas movie and order pizza for dinner. We ordered pizza from Papa Johns and the kids chose Grinch for the movie. Last year Kenzie refused to watch this movie for some reason but this year, they both loved it. We had some extra time when it was over so we let them watch Prep & Landing. They remembered the elves from the things at Hollywood Studios. It was another short movie so it worked out well.
On Day 23, Kenny was found fishing with his buddy, the Oklahoma mustang, that Daddy brought home from a work trip once. The kids thought this was HILARIOUS but were a bit worried for the safety of our fishies. I promised them that Kenny was just joking and wasn't going to catch and eat them. Kenzie thought it was great that he went into her room to take her fishing poles from her fishing game. Kenny was probably just thankful that our kids could sleep through the apocalypse (remember the fire truck in Will's room a few weeks ago??) so he was able to get things without waking anyone up.
Our activity for the day was to finally decorate our gingerbread house. This year we opted to get one village instead of two houses. This would give each kid a house or two to decorate but we didn't have to buy two kits. I ended up getting frustrated trying to get the houses to stay together and brought out the big guns. Or rather, the glue gun. It worked and set much faster so the kids could get down to business. I picked up that idea at our Girl Scout meeting earlier in the week. Awesome idea! This was the first year that we didn't have to do a whole lot. The kids needed some help getting the icing out but deciding what to put where and actually doing it, was all them this year. They really seemed to enjoy it.
On Day 24, Kenny set up a potato sack race on the bar. As usual, it seems he would win if the game were to have finished before we woke up. Kenzie was mostly concerned with where Kenny found brown paper bags in the house because she didn't know we had them.
We had a few activities for the day. We moved up making Christmas cookies by a day because we knew we would be busy on Christmas Eve. It took us quite a while but both kids were super excited to help out this year. They both decorated for the first hour or so. Then, we lost Will. He was done. He played a while and then asked to go to bed. Turned out that he was running a low grade fever and he ended up sleeping most of the day. He said he didn't feel bad but was just tired. Kenzie helped us decorate the entire time. Two large batches that took over 2 hours to finish. She hung in there with us. It was great. It went much faster than it has in the past because she was so helpful. The cookies tasted awesome too. Yes. We sampled them. After dinner we set out to visit Kit Land Nelson Park. This is a local park in our area that has a light display that we go to every year. The kids run around and we look at all the lights. Right as we were leaving, I even noticed a painted rock hanging out in a tree. The kids were pretty stoked about that. Then we drove around town looking at people's personal light displays. Just before we left the house, Kenzie remembered a couple of years ago when we did a lights scavenger hunt so we made our own this year for the drive around town. It was a lot of fun. The only two things we didn't find were the word "JOY" and a pink flamingo. We can thank Daddy for that last one. Haha! He was convinced we could find at least one living in Florida... but we didn't. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but we couldn't find it. We tried. The kids loved doing this again this year. This was the first year that Will could participate and there was a lot of yelling as they would spy something from the list. It was fun. I think the scavenger hunt is definitely going to become a thing.
On Day 25, Kenny hung out in his usual Christmas Eve location. He was found hanging from the fan in the living room with a pile of presents underneath him. Kenny is now a willing participant in one of my favorite Christmas traditions. As long as I can remember, Santa always delivered one present a day early to our house. It was always the same thing. PJs to wear on Christmas Eve. This was such a fun tradition that we can't get my own mom to leave it behind. The PJs are now from her, but all four of us (and my sis-in-law, bro, dad, and her) all get new sets each year. The kids were super excited this year. Kenzie got a gown like she loves and her and Will matched. Love it.
That day we were pretty busy. We started our morning at church. We had a worship service in the morning. It was amazing. The kids and I were right up front listening to the worship team and the message. They even came up with this great idea for busy boxes for the kids. The kids loved them and it kept them mostly busy. After that we had to run over to Publix which was surprisingly easy for it being Christmas Eve. We met up with the neighbors in the afternoon to let the kids do their gift exchange. Then we turned around, got dressed up, and headed out to church at Will's school. The church his school is a part of had a family candlelight service in the evening. We went last year, as well. The kids did pretty well in the service. They called all the kids up front during the service and told the Christmas story then took all the kids away for a few minutes. When they returned, they all "acted" out the Christmas story. It was cute. Kenzie was an angel. Will wasn't anything but he was one of the youngest so that made sense. He didn't care either. Then the kids sang We Wish You A Merry Christmas for the parents and at the end, it snowed on them. They had a blast. For Silent Night, the adults had candles but the kids were given glowsticks (like last year) which was a huge hit (like last year). After church we went to Buca di Beppo for our annual Christmas Eve dinner. It was so yummy! Will probably ate half the salad. Kenzie ate her weight in bread. And both kids put a hurt on the spaghetti and meatballs. We used to come home with a ton of leftovers... now we are lucky if we have barely a miniature serving of pasta to bring home. When we got home, the kids got on their new PJs and we sat down to read The Night Before Christmas before turning in. My hope is that next year we can add in the Christmas story from the Bible but we know the story is not exactly easy to follow if you read directly from the Bible so we have waited on that for the last few years. The kids went right to bed because they knew they had to be asleep for Santa and Steven and I turned in after watching a bit of A Christmas Story.
Christmas day came bright and early but for the first time in the last couple of weeks, the kids actually stayed in their rooms until their lights turned on for their clocks. Will was in our bed at 6:55 and Kenzie came bouncing out right at 7. Perfect! We all went into the living room to see what Santa brought and the kids were pretty excited. Will got a new bike with pedals and training wheels "like Sissy" and Kenzie got a doll that looks a lot like her. She has changed her name about 16 times, I think but we seem to be stuck at Madison now. (I told her that if had ever had another little girl, we considered the name because we liked how it sounded with Mackenzie and it stuck as a doll name.) We opened stocking gifts and then had some breakfast while we watched part of The Polar Express. When we finished, we got to opening the gifts from each other. The kids loved the entire thing. They said "Thank You" quite often and got excited even about the smallest things. I love this age. They also wanted to open every gift they got but we usually leave a few unopened in their closets to take out as the year goes on. We do it at birthdays too and it works really well for us. The kids each picked a gift to open to keep them busy a while. Kenzie chose an art set from Nana #2 (Nana's BFF that was pretty much my second mommy growing up) and Will chose his Blaze truck from Santa. Kenzie basically disappeared for the next hour or so. She is so into art right now and she was having a blast. Before we knew it, our families arrived and we had lunch. This year we stuck to easy foods and had sandwiches, potato salad, fruit salad, and some other yummy stuff. After eating we opened the presents they brought and the ones from us to them. The kids got a lot of great things. We had some dessert then before everyone had to head out. It was an awesome afternoon with family. We took the kids soccer net (and Will's bike) outside then and let them play. Some of the neighbors came over and played outside with them. The kids were exhausted by bedtime. Kenzie played in her room a while because she had her new bed tent from Daddy but Will went right to sleep. I think they were worn out. It was a big day.
And with that, Christmas is over for the year. Whew. It's been a busy month. We have quite a bit going on over the next few weeks but it won't be as crazy. We love this time of year.... but we are sort of ready for a more relaxing period.
Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you had a day filled with hope, joy, peace, and love.
On Day 19, Kenny borrowed Kenzie's tap shoes. We think he did it because Kenzie had her dance recital that night and he wanted to get in on the action, too. Thankfully, she no longer uses her tap shoes this year as she does ballet and jazz so we didn't have to try to remove him from the shoes.
We actually didn't have an activity for the day because of Kenzie's recital. That was technically our activity for the day. This year her teacher chose a jazz routine for the holiday recital. This is a much more low key recital than the end of the year one. That is a huge production, but this is just a recital at the studio during dance time. The parents, family, and friends that attend go into the studio itself (instead of in the viewing area) to watch an abridged class. This is a way to show off how they teach dance and what the kids are learning. Though for the parents that are usually there, it is nothing new because we have a viewing area anyway. Then we all leave and go to the largest room the dance studio has with the parents, families, and friends of all the other kids that have dance at the same time as Kenzie and each class comes in one at a time and performs for everyone. I think this year they actually split the rooms because some of the other groups mentioned going to another studio to dance, too. Kenzie's class danced to a song by Aly and AJ. I didn't know who that was until I googled it to try to find the song for her to practice at home. It is an upbeat Christmas song and it is forever stuck in my head on Monday nights and Tuesdays after dance. Like I said, this was a jazz number. It is similar (and yet so different) to ballet which is what her prior teacher typically focused on as she was mainly a ballet dancer herself. Her current teacher is more jazz so she focuses more on that. Kenzie has told us how much she has enjoyed doing jazz this year though. We figure she will continue to want to do jazz next year (as opposed to tap but either would be combined with ballet). After that, she can decide if she wants to go to just one style or another. They do combo classes until about 7-years-old. Maybe 8 but Kenzie is probably one of (if not THE) youngest in the class so she will move on a bit earlier than some kiddos. Her teacher also showed all of us the costume for the end of the year recital. It is super cute. The girls apparently requested no pink. And she played the song for us. It is an upbeat jazz style song. She said there will be some surfing. I'm not sure what that means... but Kenzie is excited.
On Day 20, Kenny was found hanging out near the manger scene. Kenzie exclaimed, "Mommy! Look at Kenny! He is bowing before Jesus!" The kids were so excited. We talked about how the Bible says that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. We talked about the real reason we celebrate Christmas.
Our activity for the day was making Reindeer Food. Before we did that though, we went over to Mt. Dora to mail letters to Santa. We decided to hold off on having Kenny deliver them and the kids were able to drop them in the mailbox we saw in Downtown Mt. Dora a couple of weeks ago. When we got home, we got to working on making Reindeer Food. This is a super simple project we have done year after year that the kids enjoy. We always make a bag for each of them and two extras for our neighbors. We went over to deliver them but then we had to get home to make dinner because Kenzie and I had Girl Scouts that night.
On Day 21, Kenny decided to hang out in the little tree in the playroom. The kids thought that was hilarious for some reason. Nothing major but I really like that they are still easily amused.
Our activity was to have hot chocolate or chocolate milk and watch a Christmas movie. The kids chose Frosty the Snowman. That seems to be their favorite Christmas movie as they request it all year long and love when we get to this day in our activities. Kenzie had some chocolate milk but Will chose white milk. He doesn't seem to like chocolate milk. I remember thinking as a kid how long these movies were but now as an adult, they are perfect. Just under a half hour so we can get them done before bedtime.
On Day 22, the kids took forever to find Kenny. That was because he was busy hanging out in the fridge. Our weather lately has been hitting over 80 degrees so I guess he was just done with that. The kids noticed him when I opened the fridge to get started with breakfast. They thought it was hilarious but I was given a firm talking to about not touching him when I went in the fridge.
Our activity of the day was to watch another Christmas movie and order pizza for dinner. We ordered pizza from Papa Johns and the kids chose Grinch for the movie. Last year Kenzie refused to watch this movie for some reason but this year, they both loved it. We had some extra time when it was over so we let them watch Prep & Landing. They remembered the elves from the things at Hollywood Studios. It was another short movie so it worked out well.
On Day 23, Kenny was found fishing with his buddy, the Oklahoma mustang, that Daddy brought home from a work trip once. The kids thought this was HILARIOUS but were a bit worried for the safety of our fishies. I promised them that Kenny was just joking and wasn't going to catch and eat them. Kenzie thought it was great that he went into her room to take her fishing poles from her fishing game. Kenny was probably just thankful that our kids could sleep through the apocalypse (remember the fire truck in Will's room a few weeks ago??) so he was able to get things without waking anyone up.
Our activity for the day was to finally decorate our gingerbread house. This year we opted to get one village instead of two houses. This would give each kid a house or two to decorate but we didn't have to buy two kits. I ended up getting frustrated trying to get the houses to stay together and brought out the big guns. Or rather, the glue gun. It worked and set much faster so the kids could get down to business. I picked up that idea at our Girl Scout meeting earlier in the week. Awesome idea! This was the first year that we didn't have to do a whole lot. The kids needed some help getting the icing out but deciding what to put where and actually doing it, was all them this year. They really seemed to enjoy it.
On Day 24, Kenny set up a potato sack race on the bar. As usual, it seems he would win if the game were to have finished before we woke up. Kenzie was mostly concerned with where Kenny found brown paper bags in the house because she didn't know we had them.
We had a few activities for the day. We moved up making Christmas cookies by a day because we knew we would be busy on Christmas Eve. It took us quite a while but both kids were super excited to help out this year. They both decorated for the first hour or so. Then, we lost Will. He was done. He played a while and then asked to go to bed. Turned out that he was running a low grade fever and he ended up sleeping most of the day. He said he didn't feel bad but was just tired. Kenzie helped us decorate the entire time. Two large batches that took over 2 hours to finish. She hung in there with us. It was great. It went much faster than it has in the past because she was so helpful. The cookies tasted awesome too. Yes. We sampled them. After dinner we set out to visit Kit Land Nelson Park. This is a local park in our area that has a light display that we go to every year. The kids run around and we look at all the lights. Right as we were leaving, I even noticed a painted rock hanging out in a tree. The kids were pretty stoked about that. Then we drove around town looking at people's personal light displays. Just before we left the house, Kenzie remembered a couple of years ago when we did a lights scavenger hunt so we made our own this year for the drive around town. It was a lot of fun. The only two things we didn't find were the word "JOY" and a pink flamingo. We can thank Daddy for that last one. Haha! He was convinced we could find at least one living in Florida... but we didn't. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but we couldn't find it. We tried. The kids loved doing this again this year. This was the first year that Will could participate and there was a lot of yelling as they would spy something from the list. It was fun. I think the scavenger hunt is definitely going to become a thing.
That day we were pretty busy. We started our morning at church. We had a worship service in the morning. It was amazing. The kids and I were right up front listening to the worship team and the message. They even came up with this great idea for busy boxes for the kids. The kids loved them and it kept them mostly busy. After that we had to run over to Publix which was surprisingly easy for it being Christmas Eve. We met up with the neighbors in the afternoon to let the kids do their gift exchange. Then we turned around, got dressed up, and headed out to church at Will's school. The church his school is a part of had a family candlelight service in the evening. We went last year, as well. The kids did pretty well in the service. They called all the kids up front during the service and told the Christmas story then took all the kids away for a few minutes. When they returned, they all "acted" out the Christmas story. It was cute. Kenzie was an angel. Will wasn't anything but he was one of the youngest so that made sense. He didn't care either. Then the kids sang We Wish You A Merry Christmas for the parents and at the end, it snowed on them. They had a blast. For Silent Night, the adults had candles but the kids were given glowsticks (like last year) which was a huge hit (like last year). After church we went to Buca di Beppo for our annual Christmas Eve dinner. It was so yummy! Will probably ate half the salad. Kenzie ate her weight in bread. And both kids put a hurt on the spaghetti and meatballs. We used to come home with a ton of leftovers... now we are lucky if we have barely a miniature serving of pasta to bring home. When we got home, the kids got on their new PJs and we sat down to read The Night Before Christmas before turning in. My hope is that next year we can add in the Christmas story from the Bible but we know the story is not exactly easy to follow if you read directly from the Bible so we have waited on that for the last few years. The kids went right to bed because they knew they had to be asleep for Santa and Steven and I turned in after watching a bit of A Christmas Story.
Christmas day came bright and early but for the first time in the last couple of weeks, the kids actually stayed in their rooms until their lights turned on for their clocks. Will was in our bed at 6:55 and Kenzie came bouncing out right at 7. Perfect! We all went into the living room to see what Santa brought and the kids were pretty excited. Will got a new bike with pedals and training wheels "like Sissy" and Kenzie got a doll that looks a lot like her. She has changed her name about 16 times, I think but we seem to be stuck at Madison now. (I told her that if had ever had another little girl, we considered the name because we liked how it sounded with Mackenzie and it stuck as a doll name.) We opened stocking gifts and then had some breakfast while we watched part of The Polar Express. When we finished, we got to opening the gifts from each other. The kids loved the entire thing. They said "Thank You" quite often and got excited even about the smallest things. I love this age. They also wanted to open every gift they got but we usually leave a few unopened in their closets to take out as the year goes on. We do it at birthdays too and it works really well for us. The kids each picked a gift to open to keep them busy a while. Kenzie chose an art set from Nana #2 (Nana's BFF that was pretty much my second mommy growing up) and Will chose his Blaze truck from Santa. Kenzie basically disappeared for the next hour or so. She is so into art right now and she was having a blast. Before we knew it, our families arrived and we had lunch. This year we stuck to easy foods and had sandwiches, potato salad, fruit salad, and some other yummy stuff. After eating we opened the presents they brought and the ones from us to them. The kids got a lot of great things. We had some dessert then before everyone had to head out. It was an awesome afternoon with family. We took the kids soccer net (and Will's bike) outside then and let them play. Some of the neighbors came over and played outside with them. The kids were exhausted by bedtime. Kenzie played in her room a while because she had her new bed tent from Daddy but Will went right to sleep. I think they were worn out. It was a big day.
And with that, Christmas is over for the year. Whew. It's been a busy month. We have quite a bit going on over the next few weeks but it won't be as crazy. We love this time of year.... but we are sort of ready for a more relaxing period.
Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you had a day filled with hope, joy, peace, and love.
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