5 Days Until Christmas!

It seems as though my pregnancy, especially at the end, went on forever. Now that sweet baby John is here time seems to be flying.  I only have 17 days left at home with him and I am so sad. I do miss the routine of having to be up and around with some structure to my day. We will see if I am still saying that once I go back. :)

Advent has been a lot of fun, but it hasn't quite played out the way I planned. We have skipped several events due to the temperatures. Not that it has been very cold, but cold enough to not take the baby out. Here's what we have been up to:

Dec 9 - Matthew 1:23; We were supposed to go see a live nativity in Glenpool, but the earliest time they were performing was 6:00 and it was in the 40's, so we decided to go to church again and take the boys in just for the worship set and sing as a family.  John slept through it, but Connor just stared. We also dedicated John at the 11:30 service that morning.  It was so special to have my parents, Joe's parents, the Panters, and Jon & Steph there to celebrate with us as we dedicated baby John to be raised in a godly home.
Dec 10 - Philippians 2:11; Joe's favorite day of advent so far - we baked and decorated (and of course ATE) sugar cookies!
Dec 11 - Matthew 2:9-11; We read the birth story together as a family. I don't think Connor quite got it because it was from an adult Bible with no pictures, but I think it is good for him to hear anyway!
Dec 12 - Hebrews 13:8 - Connor got to play with Kirstyn ("KK") while John and I went to the Oliver Christmas party.  It was a Wednesday evening, so Joe was running sound at Switch.  I also took the boys to Bass Pro after school to have their picture taken with Santa. SOOOO cute!
Dec 13 - Luke 1:36; We were supposed to make the house smell like Christmas first, but I never did get around to it and I'm pretty sure Connor could care less what the house smells like at his age. However, we did do our second activity, which was to make Miss Sarah a Christmas card.  I wrote what he wanted to say to her and then he colored it.
Dec 14 - my scripture for the 14th seems to have disappeared.  Our activity today was to read a Christmas book. Connor has about 10 Christmas books, so we are actually still working on those, and of course reading some of them multiple times!
Dec 15 - Acts 13:23; Today's activity was so simple, but so enjoyable! We made hot chocolate and watched a movie together. It probably should have been a Christmas movie, but Connor seems to be more into super heroes and action figure shows. Go figure!
Dec 16 - Isaiah 9:7; We were supposed to go to the Christmas display at Gilcrease Museum, but Saturday night John did not sleep much, so we took a family nap instead, minus Joe who was running sound at church.
Dec 17 - Acts 5:31; Our goal today was to make and take treats to a friend. I decided to try baking brownies in cookie cutters, something I had seen on Pinterest.  However, metal cookie cutters were nowhere to be found, so I bought a Christmas cookie sheet instead.  You could tell what the candy cane brownies were, but the gingerbread men just looked like long skinny brownies!  Connor and I walked down to our neighbors house to deliver the brownies, but they did not answer so we brought them back home with hopes of delivering them later.  However, said neighbor let me know that they don't eat brownies for dietary reasons and by then it was bedtime, so we ate them ourselves.
Dec 18 - Luke 2:12-14; Today we were supposed to go to downtown Tulsa for Winterfest.  However, once again, the temperatures were not conducive to a newborn, so we decided we would celebrate my cousin Jordan's birthday instead!  Happy 21st Jordan!
Dec 19 - Luke 2:15; Our goal today was to chalk a friend's driveway.  Joe had band rehearsal at church, so the boys and I loaded up and headed out to buy chalk at the Dollar store. The dumb store doesn't sell chalk!  Instead of dragging the boys out of the car at another store and then dragging them to someone's home, Connor and I made the executive decision to just go get a chocolate frosty from Wendy's instead!
Dec 20 - John 1:14; Today I am going to go through the boys' toys and we are going to donate many of them to Goodwill.  I talked with Connor today about sharing our abundance with others who don't have as much as we do, but I don't think he's very happy about having to give some of his toys away.  He told me I should just go to the store and buy those kids their own toys! And while I do like that idea (as in an Angel tree type of thing), I also want to clean out their rooms a little bit since we are about to get a haul of toys both from Christmas and Connor's birthday.

John has been growing quite a bit lately and he's so sweet and good!  Last time I weighed him he was at 9 pounds.  We started working on a schedule on Monday and it has been going pretty well so far.  Last night he slept 4.5 hours! However, we had a terrible wind storm and we didn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours after that.  There are so many little things I think of blogging throughout the day about both of the boys, but now that I actually have a minute to sit down and do it, of course I can't remember any of them! My life with boys, to be continued...