25 Days of Christmas 2013: The First Half

25 Days of McEvoy Christmas. It's the kind of thing you start with your kids when you move to a new city a couple months before Christmas, and you have no family, friends, or church with whom you can spend your holiday season. Your husband is working a job that won't allow you to travel to see family, so you are pretty much living in opposite land. 

Opposite land = the place where musicians don't play or sing or rehearse or perform at all during the Christmas season. 

That was us in 2004. Lukas was 3. Ava was a baby. I developed the 25 Days of McEvoy Christmas as a way to fill that lonely season with a little extra joy and fun. It was fun, and it has become a much loved annual tradition, though we are much busier during the holiday season these days.

However...

Last year, it didn't happen. Life circumstances prevented us from making it work, though we did try to some extent. This year, it has been happening, but I think my passion is waning a little. Maybe it's a little bit of the holiday season blues, which not even I can blame myself for having a touch of this year.

That said, while I don't have a spectacular list of fabulous projects and activities to offer you in list form, nor have I taken a daily photo of every single thing we have done (though I have taken many), here is what we have done thus far:

December 1st: Paperchains. I did not force my 12 and almost 10 year old children to make paperchains, but they are die-hard traditionalists.

December 2nd: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!

December 3rd: 3-D snowflakes (these are huge!)(and look! I'm in the picture!)

December 4th: We read The Story of the Candy Cane/Placed Candy Canes on Tree

December 5th: Charlie Brown Christmas

December 6th: St Nicholas Day, We read The Story of Saint Nicholas

December 7th: Live Nativity at our church (forgot my camera, but here's a pic from last year)

December 8th: Family Day: We played games and watched Christmas movies

 

December 9th: Pomander Balls. These smell SO GOOD! We made these several years ago too, but, this time, we found an easier way, and it went along with our school study of Victorian  Christmas as we have been reading A Christmas Carol.

December 10th: Christmas stories from the Weekly Reader book I have had since I was a little girl.

Decmeber 11th: Oops. I was working on the set and the sound for the children's musical that is coming up this weekend, and, by the time we were done, nothing else happened. It was almost 10 by the time we got home!

December 12th: CMA Country Christmas. Truthfully, we watched the first half of this on Sunday, and we finished it tonight because I couldn't muster up the energy to plan and do a craft project with the kids.

So that's that. I'll post more pics later this month. Anyone else out there doing this or something similar? It is a great way to keep the focus of the season where it belongs, on the Lord and family!