I love our Advent Calendar. It’s so cute and looks fantastic on our mantel. But, most of those cute little boxes are empty.
That’s right, I am a slacker.
I’ve been totally overwhelmed by life and have hardly worked on our calendar. I have added a few things that I know we’ll be doing this month, like planned Christmas parties, but that’s about it.
However, every morning J wakes up and finds a special activity in his box. Because every night I come up with something to do the next day or two.
It actually works great because there’s less pressure to get stuff together for an activity that I planned weeks ago. Every night I have some sort of idea of what I can handle doing the next day. So, I plan accordingly.
I know that today I can make it to the post office to mail J’s Christmas cards, but there is no way I can make ornaments with him because I have no idea what to make and I don’t have all the supplies.
I started the month off feeling like a total slacker parent, especially after seeing so many great advent calendars on other blogs and Facebook. But after a week, I’m loving my unplanned month. It’s far less stressful!
Since doing it this way, I can’t help but wonder how many other empty advent calendars there are out there. I can’t be the only one…right?
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Welcome to The Sunday Parenting Party!
Here are my favorite posts from last week!
Teaching Young Children About Giving – Fun at Home with Kids
Simple Holiday Traditions You Kids will Love – P is for Preschool
Rascally Reindeer: Our Alternative to Elf on the Shelf – Happy Hooligans
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I love this idea! It seems like a great way of promoting the idea that Christmas is about spending time with people who matter rather than just giving and receiving presents.
Thanks Jonathan, it’s been really fun so far! I have no idea what the rest of the month will be, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something!
Lol, I attached the activities to my advent calendar with paperclips so I can move things around as we go along. 🙂
Brilliant!
I think this is a smart way to do it and not slacking at all! The only reason I fill ours up right away is because I would forget to do it the night before! To be honest, I’ve used the fact that my kids can’t read yet to my advantage and told them the paper said something different than it actually did. (How’s that for slacking?!)
Oh, I’ve totally done that too! I’m going to be in trouble when he learns to read!
This is great. While there are items in the boxes at our house. I move them each night depending on what I can get done the next day. I make it work for us. This last we were ALL sick so Movie Marathon Day made an appearance 🙂
Glad I’m not alone! Hope you guys feel better soon.
It is such a huge effort to make Christmas magical for our kids and I wouldn’t worry so much at all, I’m sure you’re kids don’t even realise!
I have a friend who does this too, haha! The kids were annoyed at first, but they’ve learnt to accept it’s not all about presents 🙂 I was reading this post the other day that also has lots of xmas hacks and ideas: http://hungryhouse.co.uk/blog/slackers-christmas-guide/
I think you and I have a different interpretation of the word slacker – I bought Goblin a chocolate store bought advent calendar, none of this having to think of an activity every night, thats far too dedicated to the cause!
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