25 Days of Christmas: Day 5

Guess what! It's my birthday! So it's not a huge birthday or anything, only 26. And since I'm a mom, birthdays are less of a big deal. However, something that doesn't happen very often, only 3 times in my life in fact (2009, 1998, 1992), my birthday this year is on a Saturday! At first, I had though about asking my mom to watch Owen so that my husband and I could go do some fun things without him, but then I changed my mind and decided to make the whole day a family affair. Here's what we did.

Day 5:
We started the day at Home Depot to make Holiday Stacking Blocks at the Kids Workshop. We absolutely love going to the Home Depot Kids Workshops and the Lowe's Build and Grow Workshops. They are 100% free events that help teach basic building techniques. The Lowe's ones require advance registration, but the Home Depot ones do not.

Next came the annual Christmas parade!

After that, we went to the arts center where they had an activity for kids to stamp wrapping paper and gift tags to wrap their own presents.
Then we went to Uptown Normal where we watched Santa & Mrs. Claus travel through Uptown via horse & carriage escorted by a marching band. There was free hot chocolate, mini funnel cakes, and carriage rides plus a quick visit with Santa.

After dark, we went to the zoo where they had a special event. We were able to walk through the zoo after hours during the night with the zoo all lit up with candles. It was beautiful.

Overall, it was a really great day. Happy Birthday to me!

Elf on the Shelf: Day 5 - Sitting in the sleigh being pulled by a reindeer

25 Days of Christmas: Day 3

Day 3: Go to the mall to see Santa
Honestly, the only reason that I drag my son through this is to get a great picture. Every year, I have taken him during the week before school was out to avoid crowds. His preschool got out at 11:45am. Now that he's in kindergarten, he gets out at the same time (if not later) than everyone else. Anyway, this is how his picture turned out.

We didn't have a lot of time to do a bunch of Christmas-y stuff today because I had my last pottery class of the year from 6:30pm-9pm. Unless you count the Christmas gifts I will be able to give after everything is done in the kiln. I'll let you know how they turn out.


Elf on the Shelf: Day 3 - Sitting on Santa's lap

25 Days of Christmas: Day 2

Day 2: Letter to Santa
Today's activity is a classic. Every child needs to write a letter to Santa, right? How else would he know what to bring everyone? Last year, I came up with this brilliant idea to have my son cut out pictures from the toy magazine to tell Santa what he wants. I decided that since my son is just now learning to write, this would still be a good idea. Here is my son's letter:

So, I also did a little Christmas activity for myself. There was a Christmas Warehouse Sale at the Interstate Center in our town. It is a shopping experience that has all new products at 80%-90% off retail including Christmas items, Stocking Stuffers, Gift Wrap, Kid's Stuff, Kitchen Items, Fashion Jewelry, Cookbooks, and More! That was fun. Then, to round out my day of shopping, I also went to Kohl's to spend all my Kohl's cash that I had earned from black Friday shopping.
I also went to the zoo to pick up our pictures that we took on Saturday with the reindeer.
Elf on the Shelf: Day 2 - Circling Items in the Catalog
I sometimes like to theme our elf with an activity that we're doing that day so since today was letters to Santa day, I thought it would be fun to have our little elf looking for toys too.