In full swing

All of our Christmas countdown activities are finally finished! Only a few days late, not bad. We have our most popular countdown activity, which is the unwrapping of a book to be read before bedtime. Only a few of the kids actually sit and listen to the book, but seeing what book is going to be read is so exciting for the kids! Zoe unwrapped a book this evening.

It was Mary Engelbreit's A Merry Little Christmas...Celebrate from A to Z. Zoe read the book to her siblings.

Emily moved the doll to bag #3. Last year, we couldn't find the doll that we always use, but I found her this year. Yay! The doll reminds me of a little girl anxious for Christmas to arrive. I have several of those girls. :-) It is so much fun to see the doll get closer and closer to the Christmas Eve bag, which is just the #24 bag.

Our hallway is too narrow to get a good shot of all the bags.

Zach did our Christmas around the world activity and Kate did our "scripture tree" activity. I took a picture of them, but you can also see them here and here. Sorry, the second link isn't working.


Eleanor put an ornament on our "ornament tree".

This is new for us this year. Zoe made most of the tree and she did a great job! The kids can either make a paper ornament or pick a paper ornament that is already made to put on the tree. Eleanor and Zach had fun making ornaments last night while Zoe was making the tree.

In other news...

Our Nativity costumes arrived last night, right on time. :-) Here is a sample of what they look like.

Before the costumes arrived, all of the girls wanted to be Mary. Now they all want to be shepherds or wise men because the costumes are so much fun! We have 2 friends of Zoe and 1 friend of Emily joining us in the parade, and hopefully we'll be able to round up a few more. We have 9 costumes in all, so it would be fun to get 9 kids to participate. Zach is going to watch the parade with my mom and Kate and Noah will stay home with Matt. It looks like it may be warm for the parade (45-50 degrees). I really hope it is!

Matt and I are still on our diet. There has been no cheating yet. :-)