Before You Pack Up Your Christmas Spirit, Hit Me with Your Great Ideas!

Moms with little kids, older siblings of little kids, and little kids... I need your awesome advent ideas!!  

But before I ask for those, let me apologize.  I found out that our village's Christmas tree pickup isn't until January 14th. So don't mind me if I keep the Christmas cheer going a little longer... I fully intend to continue enjoying the twinkly tree lights, sipping Christmas beverages, listening to Christmas music, watching Christmas movies, and doing Christmas kiddie-crafts a few weeks into the New Year. I'm just going to pretend like Christmas isn't over, okay?  Okay.

Speaking of Christmas crafts/activities: this is our advent calendar.  I meant to post about it in the beginning of December... you can see how time got away from me a bit ;o)

What I did is make little envelopes (attached the Christmas-y photos with a glue stick) and put the dates on them to make the calendar part.  Then I stuck little strips of paper with Christmas activities listed... one (or two) for each day. And I taped the envelopes to the wall.  Not very Martha Stewart of me.  Someday I'll come up with something a bit more classy looking.  But for now this works.

Some of our advent activities were as follows:

-decorate the "Christmas book box"
-make hot glue snowflakes to hang
-make snowflake finger paint art
-open two Christmas books (I used this throughout the month as a "filler" activity)
-Ugly Sweater Party
-make clay ornaments for the tree
-take a walk in the snow
-make a snowman
-make paper snowflakes
-take a family photo by the tree
-St. Nicholas Day
-make Christmas cookies
-make strawberry and cream "Santa's" for a dessert snack treat
-make toilet paper tube snowmen
-deliver cookies to neighbors
-eat Christmas cookies for breakfast
-make red and green playdough
-eat Christmas Eve picnic dinner and open stockings/Christmas jammmies

We never got to some of them (hence the "I'll still be doing Christmas crafts in the next two weeks") and some of them ended up being kind of lame.  But the tradition is still a work in progress and thankfully the girls aren't old enough to care.  Eventually, they'll be able to take turns pulling the advent activity out of the envelopes for each day.  It'll be fun!

What I'm wondering is would anyone want to shoot me some other fun kid traditions or activities that I could add to next year's calendar?  I know I could easily hop on Pinterest but I'd love to hear some tried and true ideas from the friends, family, and readers I know and trust!

So what did you do this Christmas season that your preschoolers just loved?  What do you remember doing with your kids each Christmas while they were small?  What do you remember from when you were a kid?  I'd be so honored to add your traditions to our own!

Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!