o christmas tree

Last year for Christmas I received an advent calendar with little doors for each day of December. My plan was to start using it this year with Rachel to help her count down the days until Christmas. So we started on Tuesday. She opens up a little door in the morning (she wakes up each morning immediately asking to open the next door--she's so excited about it!) and there's a little piece of paper inside with a different activity for the two of us, or sometimes all three of us, to enjoy that day.

So far.....

Dec 1: Put up Christmas decorations

Dec 2: Watch Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

Dec 3: Paint in a special new book (a Rudolf paint with water book--she painted every single picture in the book that day!)

Dec 4: Make a snowman craft (which we had to do immediately, which means by 7:30 in the morning we had already done a craft!)

Dec 5: Go Christmas shopping with Daddy

Dec 6: Put up the Christmas Tree

Dec 7: Play with a new Christmas sticker book (she opened it at 6:40 this morning and by 7:00 AM she'd put all the stickers in the whole book--all 16 pages were done!)

So yesterday was Christmas Tree day. She's been looking forward to it for well over a month....ever since she started seeing Christmas trees in the stores.

And it didn't disappoint. She's been ooohing and aaaahing over it ever since.

(Yes, she was playing dress up while simultaneously decorating the tree, and yes, she had on a different dress up outfit a little bit later when I took the other pictures!)

This morning she was so excited to come downstairs and see the tree. She tells me over and over again throughout the day, "I LOVE Christmas, Mommy!" It's so fun to watch her enjoy everything so much.