Celebrating Advent and other Christmas adventures

I decided to make an Advent calendar this year so that Jake could count down to Christmas. I decided this on December 1st so I only had one day to create my calendar and just constructed it from felt. It turned out pretty well for the amount of time I spent on it, but I'm determined to sew one out of Christmas material for next year. I cut out different colored "ornaments" for each day of the calendar. I ended up just stapling this one together which Jake LOVED helping me do. He's now a huge fan of the stapler! I put strips of paper with activities for everyday until Christmas, and Jake gets to pull one each morning.

So far we've made Christmas tree brownies, painted Christmas pottery with Jake's friends, Jackson and Lillie Beth:

...made Christmas cards for baskets for Ty's work, and put up Christmas decorations in the house. And about that....

Saturday was our decoration day. We got everything out of the attic and assembled the tree. I realized quickly that Grace was not going to be a big help so we put her in the high chair with some cheerios and she was happy. As I was plugging in the lights, I felt a sting. Lo and behold, I got stung in the behind by a wasp...seriously, who does that happen to??? Ty disposed of the wasp, and I complained a little but kept decorating. As soon as we had all of the ornaments on the tree, Jake walks behind the tree, loses his balance and falls into the tree. The tree topples to the ground with ornaments shattering everywhere. Jake wasn't hurt, just scared. We swept up all of the broken ornaments and got rid of all of the other glass bulbs. Luckily, our sentimental ornaments weren't breakable and survived. We put the tree up again and this time successfully. Here's Jake Sunday morning in front of the tree...(By the way, the tree skirt was an actual skirt I wore in a school Christmas play in the 3rd grade and the Paddington Bear under the tree was brought home from the hospital with me when I was born 33 year ago next week).

This morning my wasp bite was still really hurting, and I realized that it was getting redder and bigger so Ty convinced me to call the doctor. My friend Claudia graciously kept my kids for an hour, and I humbly went to the doctor so she could look at my bite. Remember this is on my rear end...slightly embarrassing. It turns out I'm allergic to wasps, and I got some steroids. The doctor told me I might want to carry an epi-pin for the future. Not exactly reassuring. Then comes the real zinger. The doctor wants to know how in the world I got stung on the behind...she asks if I was decorating my tree naked? REALLY...really??? I tried to explain that I was wearing lightweight jogging pants, and she laughed and said what an unusual situation this was. That made me feel so much better (insert sarcasm here).

What started out as a pleasant family evening where I envisioned us sipping hot chocolate and gazing at our beautiful tree ended with a wasp sting and a fallen tree. My brother has always said that I'm situationally funny and my life would make a good sitcom. I guess this would have made one great episode.