At the start of this post, I am 58 minutes away from the beginning of December 2012. The last two years, with varying success, I have done a Christmas countdown with Taelin. Last year, I actually completed a December Daily album that chronicled all the things we did in December leading up to Christmas. It was so much fun to do a little something building up to Christmas, even though Taelin wasn't very aware of time.
This year, though, she is VERY aware of time! We made a Halloween paper chain countdown about half way through October because she was just sure that the next day was Halloween. In November, we made a turkey and for each day we added a feather and listed something for which she was thankful. All those were fun, but in some ways were just gearing her up for December! My December Daily list is complete and after an exhaustive (and almost heartbreaking) search, I found the calendar I made last year. It is kind of like a shadow box, with a sunken middle, but has little boxes around the edge that pull in and out. It took about a half a bottle of wood glue, as many clamps that my dad left behind, and many, many curse words to build.
After finally finding it tonight, I worked on the middle part a little bit (still not completely done) and filled each box with a little punched out piece of paper listing the December activity for our day. She doesn't know anything about it yet and I am SO excited to show her tomorrow. I thought I would share the list of things that I have right now in case anyone else was making a December to-do list of any kind.
1st: Decorate the house
2nd: Zoo Lights
3rd: Make Christmas snowman ornaments
4th: Shop and donate for Toys to Tots
5th: A new Christmas coloring book
6th: Write a letter to Santa (obviously with help)
7th: Shop and donate to the food bank
8th: Make paper snowflakes
9th: Decorate a gingerbread house
10th: Make salt dough ornaments for preschool teachers
11th: Paint handprint Christmas tree
12th: Taelin's Preschool Christmas Concert
13th: Make Christmas cards
14th: Concert at the Capitol (one of my teachers this year is a music teacher and we are going to go and listen to her choir perform at the Capitol building downtown)
15th: Visit Santa!
16th: Go see The Nutcracker (a local, kid-friendly show)
17th: Go Christmas shopping for Daddy
18th: Make a snowglobe
19th: Make fudge
20th: Open Hallmark ornament (decided to do this before the craziness of present opening started)
21st: Wrap presents
22nd: Baking cookies
23rd: Watch Christmas movies
24th: Drive around and look at Christmas lights
Obviously missing from this list is getting and decorating the tree. We will be doing that at some point, but I didn't want to put it on the list because so much of that depends on weather here. There is a great little u-cut tree farm just up the hill from us that we have been getting our tree from for years. Last year, we had a 9 foot tree and paid $20 for it!
So, that is the plan. We will see how it goes. There is nothing really set in stone so if it gets too crazy, I will just pull the little card and do something else. I will hopefully be good about carrying around my camera so I can capture all these little memories. There is some prep that clearly needs to be done with it all so I actually think I am going to sit down and doing a little list-building to make sure I am ready. (What isn't listed here are all the work things I have tentatively planned, the shopping and sending of presents, and the random acts of kindness that I am on the lookout for.)
And, with that, I need to get going. A new tradition that I am starting this year is wrapping up all of her Christmas books. She already has 20 Christmas/winter themed books (most of which have been packed up since last year), so I just need 4 more. We are going to open one a day and read it before bed time. And you may have guessed it, none of them are wrapped...yet...so I need to get going!
Here is to the start of the Christmas season!
Love your list! It sure looks like fun!
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