Bredford Family: Christmas comes but thrice a year...

I always hate coming up with titles for blog posts. But then all of a sudden I thought of the line from the song. "Christmas comes but once a year". Only in our case, that's not correct. Sunday we had the first of our Christmas gatherings. Then there will be the actual celebrations on Christmas, and then we'll celebrate on Saturday when we're in Georgia.

Nana and Gradpa watched Bennett on Wednesday. They tried doing a messy craft/activity with Bennett (playing with shaving cream and food coloring- smearing it all together) and apparently Bennett did NOT want to get messy. This is very strange to us, because we haven't had any problems with messy stuff, as is evidenced in these pictures.

Painting a piece of paper to later be cut into a bow for a wreath.

Bennett painted wrapping paper. Here he's painting his feet to make footprints.

The funny part was watching him try to stand without getting paint on the floor.

Yesterday he helped us with some baking. He loves dumping the premeasured cup/spoon into the bowls and then mixing. Don't worry, this spatula wasn't used again after going into Bennett's mouth. And it would appear that he's a fan of peanut butter!

Someone turned 27 months old. Eek! And once again I was late taking the picture. All week I kept telling myself to remember the picture, and then yesterday I realized I'd missed it.

As I mentioned, we had our first Christmas Celebration yesterday. We went to West Street to celebrate with Nana, Grandpa, Auntie Hanna, Uncle Andrew and Aunt Gentry.

Bennett helped Grandpa cut out some cookies. I think he got bored after just a few of them.

When I was a kid I remember my dad always setting up his childhood train around the Christmas Tree. I was hoping that I would be able to put it up around our tree, but no such luck. Instead Grandpa set it up at his house. Chris and I saw it and started playing and then Bennett came over to watch. I think we'll have to save up and get our own train.

Then it was time for presents! Uncle Andrew made a kilt for Bennett. We had known about this in advance (had to provide some measurements) so I had ordered a sporran and kilt hose. I'll have to knit him a better pair of hose because this pair was way too big. And unfortunately these pictures came out pretty horrible.

Uncle Andrew later pulled a gold dollar out of Bennett's ear. Wow! How'd he do that? Bennett kept checking for more dollars, and also trying to put his dollar back in his ear. We also showed him that he could put his dollar in his sporran, and he liked that.

Another great gift was this mixer. Bennett LOVES his play kitchen (Chris and I have plans to upgrade it for him, but that hasn't happend.) The mixer came with bags of "flour" and "brown sugar" which he mixed up and we decided he was making bread. Most likely the kind of brown bread that comes in a can. He also got a play toaster which was fun because when you pressed the lever it launched the bread out. The adults loved that! It also came with a little wooden knife and some butter that you could slice, which was fun for Bennett.

Now on to some decorations. I've mentioned our Advent calendar. Here's a picture. This year I just have put cards into each stocking talking about what we would be doing that day- baking cookies, reading a book, etc. In other years I might decide to include a small trinket. I'm undecided. I had originally seen a very similar advent calendar on Pottery Barn's website but I hadn't liked the price tag. Well, after buying all of the materials and the time put into making it, I should have just bought it. I am happy with how it turned out, so I guess it was worth it. Even if it's huge! :)

I also thought I would share pictures of our LEGO winter village. This all started last year. Chris got me one of the sets and then after Christmas I picked up another set while it was on clearance. Then this year I scoured eBay to pick up an older discontinued set, and for Chris' birthday I gave him this year's set. And Black Friday weekend LEGO was offering a deal where if you spent a certain amount of money you got a mini set for "free". Although there were many sets we wanted that would meet this dollar value, we didn't really need any of them. Instead we bought a few smaller sets, and a certain nephew is going to be getting a whole bunch of LEGOs this Christmas. :)

What's neat about these sets is that they don't just come with one building. They have a building and then various accessories- benches, sheds, vehicles, etc. So although this is only 4 sets (plus a mini set) it looks like so much more. Plus some things show up in multiple pictures, so it looks like a lot.