Last year the kids really loved the
Festival of Trees at the Expo Center. I got so many photos of Aspen staring at displays in awe, and I was looking forward to it this year. I thought both kids would enjoy it and decided to put it as an activity in their advent calendar this year.
I planned it on a day Kevin had off, so I didn't bring a stroller for any tired kid to relax in. That was probably a mistake. Going on Saturday instead of Friday afternoon was probably another mistake. Not bringing enough snacks was also a mistake. Maybe going
at all was a mistake ;). The kids didn't seem to have any fun!
We went straight to the gingerbread houses first and even though they were great, Aspen wasn't into it this year. She just moped along and complained any time Linc touched the chain that keeps people away from the displays.
We only spent a few minutes looking at the trees, and more of our time was spent in the back so Linc could hold the chains and run along them. That's pretty much all he wanted to do. And then he was depressed because he couldn't take home the cool airplane/teeter totter on display. He kept saying he wanted to get something for his house and I was like we can't fit an airplane into our car, buddy.
Maybe it was just an off day, but it wasn't much fun. Kev suggested we take out all the advent activities and instead just keep those ideas on reserve for days the kids are in better moods. But I already spent a lot of time looking over the calendar and all our schedules to find days in the first place; I don't know how I can just relax and wing it the rest of the month. It takes a lot of work to make Christmas magical, dang it!
On the plus side, the kids decorated our little Christmas tree a couple of days after Thanksgiving and that was a lot of fun. I pulled out all the ornaments and narrowed them down to ones I didn't think they'd break. We only had one casualty, so I'm proud of us! And I haven't rearranged a single ornament after letting them do it themselves ;). I love our little four-foot tree and am glad the kids were able to spend some time with me, looking at our ornaments and talking about the memories we have of many of them. So at least we had that nice experience this month to help us focus on family and the importance of being together.
Today our advent activity is baking cookies, and hopefully that will be a hit with everyone.
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