Right after Thanksgiving I made a December bucket list with the kids and hung it on the fridge-- we all got to add the things we wanted to do. It was a blast crossing things off the list (with the exception of 'playing in the snow', we did them all!) Most things probably would have happened anyway, but they seemed like so much more of an adventure when the kids could anticipate it. For example, one afternoon we went to Target on a big adventure with the only purpose of buying their baby cousin a present. (But yeah right, I'm sure that's not the only thing I left with... It's Target.)
My parents were in town for two days at the end of November. I thought that would be a great time to make her do a gingerbread house with my kids! She's particularly good at those things. So armed with a Halloween Gingerbread house that I bought for about $1 on clearance, and a ton of leftover Halloween candy, they made a pretty cute house. (I should add, the really cute Christmas stuff is what she brought with her. Like I said... she's good at this kind of thing.)
Our library hosted the local ballet company in a shortened performance of the Nutcracker. Back in 2016 we brought the kids to the real show (we got free tickets) but it is LOOOONG. We left at intermission. So this year, watching just a few dances was perfect. Mila and Siena were in heaven. At the end they let kids from the audience come try some of the dance moves. They spent most of the month listening to Sugar Plum Fairy on our speakers and running around like ballerinas.
So probably only in Texas can we put "camping" on our December bucket list. There was one Saturday night that wasn't too cold, so we put up the tent and let them sleep in the backyard with Hyrum. (That's more his thing than mine. Give me a warm bed inside any day.) They spent all Saturday afternoon playing out there, and the next morning I brought them hot chocolate and bread for breakfast.
We waited until halfway through the month to buy our Christmas tree. (We hosted Christmas a few years ago and by the time we were opening presents the tree was essentially dead.) That meant it was 50% off! The kids enjoyed decorating with us, and then right before bedtime Tiago decided to do a photo shoot. His poses were pretty ridiculous, and then he'd laugh for a few minutes uncontrollably before pulling another pose.
Another item on our list was to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We put the kids in their pajamas like regular bedtime, then told them to run jump in the car. We drove to Dunkin' Donuts, then enjoyed way too much sugar while we drove around our neighborhood looking at lights. We particularly enjoyed this white house with cool white icicle lights. (Our own.) [Those lights were a pain in the butt. We got out the lights from previous years, and were one strand short to make it across our house. We went to Walmart to buy more, but they didn't have cool lights. So we ended up discarding all our old lights and buying completely new ones so they'd actually match. What a hassle! That was not on my bucket list.]
Our city has an event every year called "Santa's Village." Groups from the community run different booths/houses for visitors to go inside. We braved the cold to visit with Santa, along with policemen, fire fighters, Winnie the Pooh, and others.
Instead of doing a lot of December treat baking, I've tried to make the tradition of making a zillion cinnamon rolls and bringing them to neighbors. This years were a success. For me, the biggest trick is getting the delivered within a reasonable window after baking them.
And that wraps up most of our December fun. In addition to these activities, we had plenty of hot chocolate in our German Christmas market mugs and unwrapped a Christmas book each day to read together. (It ended up being about every other day because we'd forget.) And the 9 days before Christmas we tried to do a short spiritual thought (based on the Colombian tradition of the Novena) although we weren't always great about staying on top of it and then had to play catch-up. It's hard having kids with early bedtimes. Between dinner and bedtime everyone is in a bad mood so nothing fun happens.
So if only we had a little snow, December would have been pretty close to perfect. There was plenty of magic for my kids before Christmas even arrived. [And probably correlated to that, the week before Christmas Tiago whispered to us one evening, "I haven't gotten mad or thrown anything in two days." And it was true! He usually has at least one fit a day, but went several days around Christmas time with awesome behavior. I think he was so busy having a great time.]
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