advent calendar: days 13 - 19

day 13: "take your bookmarks to give to people at the seniors care home"

when we were kids, we always went up to the seniors homes with our school to sing carols or take crafts that we had made. i thought it would be a good experience of the giving season for ben to visit a care home as well. it hadn't occurred to me that i should be calling ahead but i'd made the plan with a friend to look after avery already. in the morning, i called the only care home that i knew of in abbotsford and the woman informed me that we needed to go through the volunteer coordinator because of the level of care these people needed and the coordinator wasn't in that day. because we were going to go to a friends' house for avery and then were supposed to play there afterwards, we went for a playdate instead. i should have followed up on this one and made it for another day.

day 14: "make christmas ornaments"

we used Crayola Model Magic which i'd heard about on pinterest as being easier to mold than playdough but dries nicely. it turned out to be more like rubbery foam - very light but a lot of work to roll out. this craft turned out to be more mommy than ben but we were making star ornaments with cookie cutters.

then we pushed a straw into the top so that it would dry with a hole in it for a ribbon. (ben liked putting the straw into all the dough as you can see by the blob with a straw in it in the background here.)

day 15: put up ben's own pretend christmas tree in ben's room

the felt christmas tree finally makes it debut! i would have liked to have this as one of the earlier days in the month but i left this project hanging for a little while when i hit the roadblock of how to attach the felt pieces together. i ended up using fabric glue but i think it's pretty toxic...you wouldn't want a kid to put it in their mouth or anything. but i made a large star and an angel so that ben could choose which one he'd like on the top of his tree. both grandparents have angels but we have a star on his. as you can see, the angel made the cut.

ben hasn't played as much with this tree as i would have liked. it could be because it's away in his room and he doesn't often play in there. maybe there will be more playing with it next year when avery is 1. :)

day 16: a bust.

buuut, we did continue to work on ben's ornaments. we painted them with gold glitter glue. then the following morning, we strung them with ribbon and wrapped them up to give away as gifts.

i asked ben who we should give an ornament to and he said that he wanted to give one to avery. since she wasn't grasping it when ben was putting it in her hand, i suggested we hang it on her ear. ben loved this, as you can see.
wrapping gifts is ben's favourite thing to do. he often wraps letters in washcloths while he's in the bathtub then sings happy birthday so he thought wrapping christmas presents was great.

day 17: go to kai's house for a christmas party

this was our third annual christmas dinner with this group of friends. the camera was barely out at the party so we don't have a picture of ben but we have this picture of avery by our friends' christmas tree. they put on an awesome spread for us

day 18: nothing in the calendar - we headed out to white rock to hang out with my parents and i hadn't had anything planned for the calendar. fun day nonetheless.

day 19: use stamps to make your own wrapping paper

i'd been saving ben's paintings in the last month and on this day, we flipped them over and sponged shapes on the backs to make wrapping paper. i cut some sponges into the shapes of a star, christmas tree, and a candy cane and ben stamped until his heart was content.