I found myself up late last night decorating Dan's classroom for Seminary and making Colton's lunch--and then this morning in the car dropping and picking up kids from school and preschool, with a phone call from the school telling me that Colton had lost his silver tooth with a spacer~ and I KNEW break was officially over!!
We made a vacation of it for sure!! I LOVE being home with my children--but with four children in five years w/ a 1500 plus sq ft. home it can get "hairy" when we are here together for long periods of time. Throw in some presents and sugar to the mix as well. SOOO I decided to make x-mas tins for the boys to draw out a piece of paper with something FUN to do during the day and something ACADEMIC/LEARNING from another-- it made for some fun adventures (although we wish Daddy had school breaks like he use too!)
ACADEMICALLY we read all the Christmas books in our collection, my 6-year-old (colton) learned to FINALLY tie his shoes, and I also taught him how to clean our toilets!
Now, for the FUN things (look below at the pictures). Mind you, even the simplest things can be fun for children-we didn't need museums or BIG (and expensive), or BUSY places to satisfy them!
Day 1: Christmas sticker scenes (thanks to left over playgroup crafts)
Day 2:Play w/mom one of your Christmas toys. The game of choice was candyland!
Of course, ONE day was our traditional sleep under/by the Christmas tree, and stay up late playing video games and watching movies SLEEPOVER!
We decided we might hold off to do that again. It was the LONGEST night ever w/ half of them ending up back in their beds!
Day4: Decorate bags w/ Christmas decor to get ready to collect nuts! (also a leftover playgroup craft) Oh, and notice the BIG, FAT potato sitting next to Ryland? He is my bottomless pit and I found him chomping away on an entire potato out of the fridge (not heated w/ no fixin's) from the previous nights potato bar. ha ha ha
Day 5 : (w/ Aunt Kerri who was visiting that day) Collect Pecan nuts from a nearby tree down the street and a wal-mart treat trip with Aunt Kerri
Never knew nut hunting was like Easter egg hunting!
A picture of their finds. Mommy had to promptly go out and buy a nutcracker!
Day 6: Make and frost Great Grandma Roth's sugar cookies!
I did get them to get most of the icing on the cookies and not in their mouths (thus the reason we are always sick!)
I had just mopped the floors, since we had NO table at the time (we sold our old one and had not put together the new one yet)-So we made it an outside activity-we are glad we did it has rained the last 3 Days since!!!!
We have watched movies galore, slept in (meaning not having to get up for seminary)~ However don't get jealous, Dacie decided to not let us get too spoiled and changed her wake up time to 6am!! Ahh shucks, it was just a bunch of fun for us this holiday. Now I have many more ideas for next year as I began packing up Christmas today! Hooray!!!
4 comments:
soooo fun! I swear you have the best ideas for fun! Okay, I've *heard* of the 'sleep under the tree' tradition, but had yet to meet anyone brave enough to try it! kudos to you!!! =)
i liked this post, it goes to say you don't have to spend money to have fun. I liked all the activities you guys lined up, looks like the kids really enjoyed them! Good for you Alicia, you are a great mom!
Looks like a fun packed break...I cannot imagine how it might feel to have kids under feet all the time. Our house in Oregon was like that with only three kids and it was tight at times, especially in the winter when you cant send them outside to work out the sweets :)
Your activities looked like so much fun. You are AMAZING!
You put me to shame! I always want to have the energy to do all those fun things, but I don't do them nearly as often as I'd like. It's the clean-up I dread. So, any tips on how to make the clean-up easier?
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