This post is part of the Home-Spun Holidays blog carnival, which is being held at Mentoring Moments for Christian Women. The theme of the carnival is to share the simple, inexpensive things you do at home to make the Christmas season memorable. On my Counter-cultural Mom blog, I’ve shared some of the ways we celebrate Christ’s birth during this season. This post is about some of the things we do just for fun.
There are lots of things we do for fun during the holiday season right here at home. I do a lot of my shopping online, and once the holiday packages start arriving, the kids enjoy making box robots. They have lots of fun constructing the robots and then playing with each other in their new costumes.
Every year my husband sets up a little Christmas village and a train around the base of the tree. We all love to turn the lights out and light up the tree and the village, and watch the train chug around the track. It’s so relaxing and fun. The boys can often be found sitting by the tree watching the train. This is one of our favorite traditions.
Our boys love to drag their bedding out by the Christmas tree and have a “sleepover” together. They put Christmas music on and fall asleep to the sounds of the season and the twinkling of the tree lights. I sneak in once they are asleep and turn off the music and the lights. I snapped this picture last weekend.
It seems almost too silly to mention, but one of the kid’s favorite things is to hide army men in the Christmas tree! They love to pretend these army men are spying on me during the Christmas season, and they take it on as a challenge to hide them so well that I can’t find them. When I pull the tree out every year I find army men that have spent the winter in the tree, never having been found. The boys love that, because it means they did their job right.
Making Gingerbread houses is another beloved tradition. I’ll be writing more about that later this month.
My younger boys still enjoy setting up the Nativity set. We have 4 different sets and two stables, and I put them all out at once. When I am reading aloud to them, they like to play with the little figures and set up the scene.
What do you do to celebrate the Christmas season? If you blog about it, please link your post to the Mentoring Moments blog carnival. It will run from December 6-12th.
Sounds like fun. Robots, Nativity, shopping online. We do our shopping online also. Sure beats the crowds.
Love the army men in the tree!