12 Days of Christmas rescheduled for next year

Well, my grandiose plan of having "12 Days of Christmas" activities for each day starting on the 14th until Christmas has yet to work out. Would you like to know what I am blaming? The snow! As much as I love the beauty of this white stuff and that it reminds me of when I was teaching and hearing those much loved words "snow day", I'm over it. We don't see it often here in the Pacific NW, and normally it doesn't stick around long, but it has these past few days. I guess I shouldn't blame it entirely on the snow. I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things since returning from a week long getaway with the hubby, and I'm a little less motivated than I thought I would be.

We returned from vacation on the 13th and I was going to schedule some fun activities for the rest of the days until Christmas Day (which just so happened to be 12 days, which of course is how I got the unique name 12 Days of Christmas). My plan was to write each of these activities on a slip of paper and then put them in cute little boxes that I was going to make. Then Mikayla could open one each day and see the surprise for the day. Most of the activities I was planning on doing were going to be simple and cheap, not complicated and expensive.

Just for the fun of it, here are some of the planned activities for my 12 Days of Christmas. I still plan on doing some of them, but not in the same format as originally planned. As much as I don't want to admit it, it might work better for next year anyway since the kids will be a little bit older and they both will be able to enjoy the daily surprise! This year Austin is not quite at the age of fully experiencing the fun.

12 Days of Christmas Activities

Christmas tree (hasn't happened yet, and we're only 1 week from Christmas!)
visit Santa
Zoo Lights or drive around to look at lights (with hot cocoa a.k.a. "warm chocolate milk")
build a gingerbread house
make a Christmas craft
cookie decorating with friends
open a new Christmas book
special date with my friend Ambria and her daughter Ellie as our gift to each other
make a Christmas craft
special Christmas movie with popcorn
open a special present (from Grammy & Papa--pajamas!)
Christmas Day fun!

I suppose since the kids will be older next year, I can come up with some more fun things, and who knows maybe next year I'll be even more ambitious and try to do something every day for the whole month. Yikes!


**As I'm writing all of this out, I'm realizing that even though my plans have changed a bit, it's not about things being perfectly planned out. Even if we don't have our tree yet, and we didn't get a chance to get all of the Christmas decor up (like the garland I purchased for cheap, cheap, cheap last year and was hoping to use as decor for outside). It's OK not to have everything done like I want it...as long as I don't give up completely. I was just about to bag everything since I couldn't do it the way I wanted to (sometimes I'm too much of an all or nothing kind of gal), but then that would be giving up some of the things that make me happy. I still plan to do some of these things in the next 7 days before Christmas...snowed in or not.

But, you know what, as long as my kids are happy and we're spending time together the details don't really matter!


I do have to say that before I left for vacation, I had our Christmas card and letter completed and delivered, and all Christmas shopping finished. Thank goodness for that or else I would be doing even more complaining.

I really do love the Christmas season! Time to get it together and to kick my holiday spirit into high gear! Who cares if it's snowing outside!