Advent Calendar

Okay Jillo, you made me do it. I had big plans for my advent calendar and at the last minute I kind of wimped out. In any case, I decided to limit my candy to things that could also be used on the gingerbread houses. Just to go off on a tangent here, do not buy the peppermint peeps. I have to admit I am not a huge peep fan in the first place, although I do find their seventies style very appealing. Snowmen peeps are your standard peep flavour but the peppermint stars (not shown) I bought completly hoarfacious and I am a huge fan of peppermint. It was sort of worth the purchase to see Mark pop one in his mouth and go running out of the room to find somewhere to dispose of the yuckeep. BLECH!
Back to the advent calendar, I was too cheap too lazy to make my own bags and too cheap to buy two packs of ready-made so we had to wait until yesterday to start our adventing (pack of 18). I had the girls stamp their names on an equal number of bags because 1) i thought they would have fun doing so-they didn't and evntually Aida resorted to stamping miscellaneous numbers all over hers. 2) It would remind me whose turn it was to open the bag- Ed doesn't get a turn. In each bag I put a treat for each child, a puzzle piece to glue onto our nativity puzzle advent thingy and a challenge. The girls helped write the challenges and they did have fun doing that. It has things like help a neighbor, read a story about Jesus, help mom or dad without being asked stuff like that. The big question is how well will we follow through with it-our track record is not well. Will we stuff the challenges and just eat the candy? Probably, but I hope not.