We made Christmas ornaments tonight, along with our friend Michelle who came over for dinner.  We used pipe cleaners and pony beads to create various ornament shapes, and this idea came from the FamilyFun website.

The boys and Michelle stringing the beads together:

Emmaline stringing her beads:

Some of the finished products:

Andrew hanging an ornament:

We continued our Advent celebration with making and decorating gingerbread man cookies. Our good friends came over for dinner and afterwards we sat around the table and decorated our gingerbread man cookies. All the children had a wonderful time, and delighted in eating their newly decorated cookies.

This was my first time making these cookies and I wasn’t even sure what they are supposed to taste like. I got my recipe from 101cookbooks and I really like the taste of these cookies. (Note: to make rolling out the dough easier, I put a piece of dough between two sheets of wax paper and roll it out. After the kids imprint the cookies, I then peel the cookie off of the wax paper.)

Here are some photos from our advent activity:

Cutting the dough:

Freshly baked cookies:

Decorating time:

Our youngest daughter’s opinion: “Who needs decorations?!!!”

Our activity for the first day of advent was attending a Tree Lighting Ceremony in our city.  The children got to enjoy free cookies and hot apple cider.  We were surprised that there was a very nice concert inside the community center where we heard choirs from a women’s a capella group and a local high school group, and dance performances from both children and adults.  The kids really enjoyed this evening’s outing.

Here is Andrew getting the activity slip from the stocking.

Matthew reading the slip.

Mommy (Emmie is on my back but you can’t see her) and the boys at the Tree Lighting Ceremony.

Calissa on Daddy’s back.

Emmaline wanting to eat her cookie instead of posing for the camera.

Women’s choir performing.

Children’s dance performance.