Making Memories with the Heathens

I can't remember when I started this, maybe when Tuba Girl about three or four, but every year we make an activity advent calendar. Basically, we make gingerbread men out of brown paper bags, I write a special activity on one of the gingerbread men then glue another gingerbread man on top. We decorate the little fuckers then string them up on a piece of yarn or something and hang it along a wall or bookshelf or whatever is available that year.

(I'll try to post pictures of this later since I caved and bought a really cheap $20 digital camera. I think it's one of those disposal deals and it's pretty shitty, but better than nothing. I want to send it to Disney with Tuba Girl. If she loses or breaks it, at least I haven't lost a major investment.)

I found this idea in a parenting magazine years and years ago and we've done it ever since except for a couple of years when finals were pushing me to the brink. I like to start my advent activity calendar ASAP. Just for shits and giggles, here is my list of activities. They aren't set in stone and are very well liable to change between now and the actual day of the activity depending on if things have come up.

My List of Special Memory Making Activities

• 11/27  - decorate the gingerbread man calendar
• 11/28 - pull out the tree, ornaments and decorations
  
• 11/29 -  My godchild's birthday party
  
• 11/30 - Discuss a charity we'd like to give to.
  
• 12/01 - Go on a nature walk at the recreational park and pick nice pine cones. (For a later project.)
  
• 12/02  - Wild Boy's Birthday. We'll do something he is interested in such as playing a board game or watching a favorite movie.
  
• 12/03 - Make bird feeders with the pine cones.
  
• 12/04  - Decorate tree and drink home made hot chocolate. (I'll put up the tree and string the lights while the kids are at school so they won't have to wait through that. I never put up the tree until after Wild Boy's birthday.)
  
• 12/05 - Wild Boy's birthday party
• 12/06  – Christmas Parade
• 12/07 – Watch Wild Boy's Christmas movie pick. (Mondays are usually stressful days so I don't like to actually plan anything on Mondays.)
  
• 12/08  – Write Christmas Cards to troops? (This is a question mark because I need to find out if I should switch this to an earlier date so that they'll get there in time.) Possibly, I may change this to Christmas cards for the elderly or something.
  
• 12/09 – Write letters to  Santa.
  
• 12/10 – Make Christmas ornaments
• 12/11 – Christmas at the local arboretum
  
• 12/12  – see the Nutcracker (We see the local production of the Nutcracker every single year. The only year we didn't attend is the year Wild Boy was born. Relatively speaking, this is an expensive event for me because it costs nearly forty dollars for a family of four to attend, but it's something we really enjoy. Well . . . I think they enjoy it. Mostly, they end up driving me up the wall, but I'm determined they're going to get some damned culture somewhere even if it's just watching a bunch of four-year-old ballet students run up and down the stage pretending to be mice)
  
• 12/13– Watch Dman's pick of a Christmas themed movie and continue making Christmas ornaments.
  
• 12/14 - Cub Scouts Christmas Party
  
• 12/15– make book marks to give as Christmas presents. A lot of our family and friends are voracious readers so I thought bookmarks would be cute and useful. I'm big on the useful in terms of presents. Either useful or edible. I thought the picture ones would be really cute for the grandparents. Bookmarks may make cute teacher gifts, too. Haven't made up my mind about that, yet. Usually, I try to give teachers a sort of teacher supply gift bag on the years I can afford it. 
•  12/16  – Watch Tuba Girl's pick of a Christmas movie and finish up any undone ornaments or other crafts I may have figured out by then.
  
• 12/17 – A treasure hunt? (Still playing with this idea, it's new.)
  
• 12/18 – Aunt Brina’s house. Aunt Brina is not a "real" aunt, but is my best friend. We have dinner and open presents at her house the last Friday before Christmas and have been doing this for five years now. If the Friday before Christmas turns out to be Christmas Eve or Christmas Eve Eve, then we work it to something else.
  
• 12/19 – Look at Christmas Lights
• 12/20  – Watch my  movie pick and make candy. (I should actually be close to finishing up most of my Christmas candy making activities by this point, but the kids like to help so I plan to set this day aside to let them do that. My kitchen is a bit small and counter space is a premium. I also have these minor claustrophobia issues so I have to be mentally prepared to have more than one person in the kitchen helping. It's weird. I'm weird. You people all have your own weirdnesses so LEMMELONE.)
  
•  12/21   – Watch A Christmas Story. My absolutely most favoritest Christmas movie ever.
  
•  12/22  - Make homemade play doh for some of the cousins. I'm sure the parents with carpet will hate me.
  
• 12/23   – Nanny R's house.
  
• 12/24   – Granny J’s house
• 12/25 – Christmas! We wake up Christmas morning, open presents then go over to my mom's house later in the afternoon. We may go to Nanny W's house sometime in the evenings, depending on how the kids are doing.        

It's very hard planning the holidays when you have a lot of family who seem to think you should come to their house on Christmas Day. The only person who is absolutely guaranteed to see me on Christmas is my mommy and that's because I promised her and I have her only grandchildren. It took a few years, but we have a basic arrangement about how to spend Christmas with family members.

Of course, this doesn't always work for everyone. We've yet to settle out a specific day for Nanny W so that's why she gets squished into Christmas evening. Also, my dad has been a bachelor for over 20 years so he spends the Christmas holidays with us. This means he goes nearly everywhere we go including my mom's house.

My parents have more or less made their peace over the past couple of decades, but spending time around my father can be . . . stressful. He has some shizoparanoid delusions of grandeur and persecution going on.

My father does not rest his prophesying even on Christmas day. Fun times. Fun Times. His main topics of conversation include but are not limited to:

• the "Mark of the Beast"
• When the World is Going to End
• How Each and Every President's Name Equals to 666
• How His Name Equals to 666
• How Every Current President Since Reagan has Possibly Been the Antichrist
• How he May Be the Antichrist
• How He is Going to Run for President
  
• The Super Computer in Texas called "The Beast"
  
• America as Babylon the Whore
• How to Recognize the Mark When They Try to Implant it in Your Skin
• He's Moving to Israel
  
• Homeland Security is Watching Him (they probably are)
• Mother Fucking Benny Hinn
  
• His Government Has Set Him Up and a fun variety of other great family conversational topics.

My mom doesn't mind him being in her house, but the rambling ticks her off after a while. Last year she asked me why I didn't just tell him to shut up and I told her I couldn't do that because even though he is crazy as hell, he's still my parent and I'm trying to respect him and shit.

She sat clicking away with those pointy knitting needles a few minutes before she finally hollered, "Shut the hell up, Dave!"

That seemed to work and we went back to digesting the Christmas feast in relative peace. My dad gets along with my stepdad really well, though. They both never talk to people, they talk at them, meaning the other person in the conversation rarely, if ever, has an opportunity to speak and unless he or she is one of the few, the brave, the rude, then he or she just sits there drowning under the drone of a steady conversation of no interest silently praying to God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or any deity of their choice that an airplane would fall on the house. It's not long after the praying that the person being talked at slips into a catatonic state.

So my dad and stepdad talk at each other and they seem to have a great friendship somehow. It also seems to help that my stepdad is nearly deaf after thirty odd years of working on school buses.  He doesn't know what the hell my dad istalking about half the time.

Well, there is my Christmas activity calendar and a couple of random stories. The kids love the calendar and it's something they look forward to every year. I have a lot of fun with it, too.