We’re off to a bit of a rocky start with our Advent Calendar activities. Yesterday, Gal Smiley showed up in our room at 5 a.m. yesterday wanting to open the first envelope, and if she’s that excited about a little envelope action, I really can’t wait until Christmas morning. We made her go back to bed until 6, but as soon as she was out of bed she was opening up the envelope to see what was inside.
Then, there was a lot of crying when everyone found out we wouldn’t actually be hanging up our stockings, as the slip of paper indicated, until after school. Yipes.
Later that day, the kids and I decorated our mantle and got out a few decorations, then picked out a stocking hanger and hung up our stockings. Captain Jelly Belly declared the whole event to be “very boring.” Way to have the Christmas spirit there, buddy!
This morning the slip of paper said, “Put up the tree.” The Captain said, “That’s boring, too!”
Then I said, “But you love putting up the tree…picking out the decorations, hanging them up, remember?”
And the Captain said, “But it doesn’t say we get to do decorations! It only says to put up the tree!”
Memo for next year: manage expectations better, and be more explicit in the slip directions!
TurtleHead 
You should be more like my mother and threaten to cancel Christmas any time someone is the least bit disagreeable. That would ensure complete psychotic chaos by Dec, 25.
Ha! My kids are loving the advent calendar(s) too and I added in another ‘energizer’ to the already spazy hyper behaviour they are exuding…we have an ‘elf on the shelf’. not a realy one, but an elf who watches over the kids and reports back to santa. i’ll blog about it over the next few days but it’s made my kids super wild.
oh and a commenter on my blog (whom i might add is lovely creative and has six children) wisely suggested that i only put the advent activity message into the envelope the night before it is to be opened so that the activities are actually ‘doable’. we are keeping it simple…….and still, they are wild.
I’m only 2 for 3 so far and I cheated on one. I didn’t have the activities ready for the 1st but wrote “get Christmas books out” after I had already done so in order that Reid would notice them when she opened the box for the 2nd – which was supposed to be a craft but we ran out of time. My husband read part of the Christmas story at bedtime tonight and I’m optimistic about getting the tree up tomorrow night. I’m glad Reid doesn’t anticipate her advent calendar as much as Gal Smiley does!
I’m laughing.
Um, Personally?
I just skipped all this and jumped right to the ‘give children chocolate’ note
Bad Mommy. Bad Mommy. But it is a Pottery Barn advent calendar so I do fill it myself….
Tomorrow? Two chocolates for each of them, three for me….