Advent calendar. Fail.

Around mid November I had a bit of panic realising that a few weeks after giving birth to the third child the older 2 kids would be finishing up at kindy for the year and they would be home with me ALL day, EVERY day for the next 2 months. The teacher in me set about planning out how we would fill our days and I thought an advent calendar would be a fantastic idea. Each day in December would reveal an activity that we could do as a family. What this out of practise teacher did not count on was how out of action I would be after giving birth, how tired and grumpy I'd be, or how crap the weather was going to be in Hastings for practically the entire month.

 Anyway these were the list of activities I had planned:
1. Put Christmas tree and decorations up
2. Learn a Christmas carol
3.Go fishing and have fish and chips for tea
4. Ride the trains at Keirunga garden
5. Go to the hot pools
6. pick our own strawberries and bring them home to chocolate dip
7. Have a day in Napier
8. Go to the park
9. Bake a cake
10. Splash planet!
11. Go for a walk in the woods
12. Take a family photo (with the dog) using self timer.
13. Go for a drive and see the Christmas lights.
14. Make Christmas decorations
15.Write a letter to Santa. Burn it in the fire place and watch the smoke float away to the north pole.
16. Read and then act out the Christmas story.
17. Go to the beach and fly a kite.
18. Have a friend over to play.
19. Shop for each other at the $2.00 shop and wrap up the presents.
20. Rent out some DVDs from the library.
21. Make fudge for the neighbours, wrap up and go delivering.
22. Make a gingerbread house.
23. Create a sleep over hut for whole family to sleep in.
24. Roast marshmallows over a camp fire.

So as it rained and rained outside for days on end, and I became so sleep deprived I couldn't imagine walking to the letterbox let alone go for a walk in the woods, it was VERY tempting to jump to day 20 and just repeat, repeat repeat. (Don't know why I hadn't thought of putting more TV based activities on the calendar.)

So Christmas Eve arrives, It's finally a sunny day and my wonderful husband looked at the calendar and all the failed activities we hadn't done and took it upon himself to fit as many of them into one day. The day before Christmas. I said something to him about been nuts, retreated to the baby's room to feed and catch some afternoon shut eye and he became once again my children's hero.

They feasted on strawberries, baked a cake, went to the park, swam and had water fights in the splash pad, had fish and chips for tea, put the tent up in the back yard and made a hut, roasted marshmallows  over a camp fire and fell into a deep contented sleep all by 7pm.

That's Mary from our nativity scene that Lucy's snuggling.

The then hero set about putting up the kids' big present from Santa, a trampoline in the front yard.

Even hero's have to call on help sometimes, this was definitely a two man job so Grandad David turned up to lend a hand

Well into the night.

Kinda stink that Santa will get all the glory for this, so kids when you read this blog when I finally  print it as a record of our years, know that the real hero isn't a man in a red suit. It's your Dad and it is he who takes all my over ambitious ideas and makes them happen. He is the one creating the memories for you that I get to write about on here.