Christmas time activities and traditions

I collected a bunch of Christmas books from a library book sale so that we could wrap them up to open one book a day until Christmas.  It's a fun way to mark the days AND get some good reading time in.

 I don't have as many great ideas about what to plan and do for the Christmas season.  I've really lost all that great energy, but here are a few ideas that we've actually kept up with.

And this is how we stacked them up.  We are taking one off the bottom each day so it still stays in the tree-ish shape.  I got the wrapping paper at a dollar store.  Great place for wrapping paper.. just got to check how many yards on the roll.

This isn't a tradition.. it was just funny.  Lily taught her baby sister to stuff something in her shirt, pat her tummy, and say "Ho, ho, ho.."  ;]

Making cut out cookies (gluten free in our case) and this tradition is always a big hit!

Grace got into it though she didn't know she was doing anything other than playing with the flour.

She called it "doe doe".. super cute.

Lily did a bunch!

I can't get away from a snowflake theme this year and I wouldn't want to! 

Renna working on making a snowman cookie.

Leftover candycorn for the nose.

A bit too much sprinkles, but hey.. it's all good.

More cookies.

The one that the girls made specially for me.

Wait.. that's all that we made?  I'm pretty sure the girls ate at least that many while decorating.  Yes, we had at least twice this much!  wooooo look at that sugar high face!

Easy Christmas game.. foam trees from dollar store and round stickers.  Roll dice and add that many poof balls to the tree.  First one to fill the tree wins!

You can play to get the exact number if you want it to be harder depending on the age of the kids.

A tradition in my family was to have a Christmas picture in front of the tree that mom would make these frames for... hers were fabric and mine are folded paper, but you could get dollar store frames or find other ways to display them!

Starting on the left with our First Christmas together in 2004.

I just finished making the frame for this year.... this is our 9th Christmas together...

It's fun to look back at how the kids have changed and grown.  I'll probably have our whole family every three or 4 years or so in the pics and just the kids all the other years (or the kids with their cousins if we get to spend a Christmas with them some day.)  We might include pets or other things as well to change it up.  The ones that work the best I think are like the far right one with the picture taken farther back.  It's neat to see how tall they are compared to each other too.