Today I combined our advent activity with play school. We made candy cane play dough and had a blast! I managed to keep all four boys from burning themselves, but someone did touch the super hot play dough and feel the burn.
Remember you can click on the photos to see them larger and read the captions
(Wow that took a lot of red food coloring!)
All three boys were giggling uncontrollably so I got the camera out, of course the giggles stopped, but they were still silly and cute.
Tonight we colored Christmas pictures together. Coloring is nice and relaxing, something needed this time of year. You can print all sorts of free coloring sheets here.
Today we went shopping for our angel tree boys. We had a 3 year old who wanted a football and a 5 year old that needed warm clothes. The boys did great with knowing we weren’t shopping for them.
No pictures tonight! We had a family dance party to Christmas music. There was lots of spinning, some slow dancing, and even a little break dancing.
Tonight we made cinnamon applesauce ornaments. Easy project and smells so good! The fabulous Sandi gave me this recipe while I was still waiting to know my boys. I’m so happy to finally get to use it.
1 cup cinnamon
1/4 cup glue
3/4 cup applesauce
Roll out and cut out
3-5 days drying time
Today for the 4th day of advent we made Epsom salt candle holders. We used a little Modge Podge, 2sticky toddlers, some colored epsom and some little tea lights.
Today’s advent activity was finding the perfect tree and decorating it. We had a lot of fun. It was even rainy and cold! Made it feel like winter around here.
Today’s activity was something I’ve wanted to learn to do for a loooong time – string popcorn and cranberries! I knew this would be slightly above the boys’ crafty level, but knew they would still like it (anything involving popcorn is awesome!).
The boys really liked it. They worked on it for about 20 minutes (long time for them). I left their supplies out the rest of the morning and Ezra came back a few times to do more. I think he liked it. 
I found it nice and relaxing. We did a couple of ornaments and I’m working on a strand. I doubt I’ll do enough to cover the whole tree, but so glad we learned how to do this.
I watched this video to learn how.
Our advent calendar this year is activity based. Our days will involve acts of service/charity, holiday traditions, family time, Christmas crafts, and Christmas music. We had a lot of fun planning it and will post each day what our activity was.
Today we packed up our food boxes for Chances for Children.
This was the first Halloween that the boys understood what was going on and it was really a lot of fun. We explained trick or treating on Saturday and Ezra was ready to go! When it came to actually doing it they were so shy and quiet. Which really shocked me because they talk to everyone when we go out.
We carved pumpkins on Sunday with my family. Went trick or treating and then went Gamma and Papa’s to show off our costumes, the boys helped hand out candy (I think they liked this the best), and then home to check out our candy.
The last couple of photos are some snacks I made for play school on Friday and some balloons we decorated with on Monday. We really had a lot of fun this year. Here are the glow balloons we used for decoration. The swamp juice recipe and the eyeballs (the fingers are just cheese and almonds, you can use a food safe marker or other decorating gel for the knuckles.)
Last Friday we took a little field trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens. We visited the pumpkin patch and saw the Monarch Butterflies. Gamma, Papa, and Abby joined out. It was a lot of fun!
You can see a few more pics here.
Made a cake, and spent the day with some family!
Matt’s cousins Zach & Bailey with 2 little boys making silly faces.
We made ‘merica’ a birthday cake. The boys blew out the candles.
Checking out their new castle.
Happy Father’s Day to one super awesome daddy! You are amazing and it clear you LOVE your boys. It makes this momma’s heart very happy to see the bond you three have. I have no doubt that we have two little boys already wanting to be just like their daddy. They will be amazing men thanks to you.
You are the best and we love you so much!