Festive Festivities

Growing up in Suriname, my family would do Advent activities every year. As children it would be simple things, like singing Jingle bells, or taking someone cookies. When we were older, we got together with a few other families and would do a weekly Advent thing, involving a Scripture reading, activity, and food. I have so many good memories of these times, and Ryan and I wanted to create those for our kids, as well as helping them walk through the Scripture foretelling the birth of Christ, and the months and days leading up to His coming.

This year, we had a reading every day as well as something to do on the majority of the days. These ranged from opening a Christmas book, to watching a Christmas movie, to making cookies, to going to someone's house.

We made pancakes and decorated them with whipped cream and strawberries, in an attempt to get them to look like Santa.

We decorated sugar cookies another night.

Nate looooooves to participate. But he wasn't sure about the frosting. 

We decorated "gingerbread" houses with our friends, the Sortores. It was pretty much a "one for the house, one for the mouth" scenario.

Nate is turning into a serious ham.

For a two year old, Tristan did a GREAT job.