25 Days of Toddler Christmas Recap

Throughout the month of December, Jake made fun of my quest to saturate our family in all things Christmas. Fast-forward ten years, and he says he can totally imagine me forcing the whole family to participate in my holiday schemes and creating Chevy Chase Christmas Vacation-level stress for everyone.

Jake (imitating the future me): “You WILL “fa la la la la” whilst putting up Christmas decorations…or ELSE!”

This sign in our house was the catalyst for his sarcasm. 

Jokes aside, we actually accomplished more of our Christmas bucket list than I figured we would. We were rained out a few days, were just plain tired on others and simply didn’t have time before leaving on vacation to go everywhere I wanted, but I’m glad we had a plan and celebrated the season with a good mix of simple, at-home activities and outings. Here are the final standings on our attempt at 25 Days of Toddler Christmas:

1. Seeing the lights at Fashion Island
2. Decorating our tree
3. Decorating the house
4. Breakfast with Santa at Pretend City
5. Seeing a live nativity
6. Reading Christmas stories
7. Christmas crafts and coloring
8. Visiting the MV Santa’s Village 
9. Seeing the Candy Cane Lane lights
10. Mailing cards and delivering neighbor gifts
11. Visiting Zoomars
12. Riding the Christmas Train at Irvine Park Railroad
13. Baking Christmas cookies
14. Breakfast with Santa and the Twins Club
15. Christmas gymnastics
16. Singing Christmas carols
17. Watching Frosty the Snowman and other classic Christmas movies
18. Neighborhood Christmas party
19. Donating toys to families in need
20. Taking Christmas portraits
21. Wrapping presents
22. Building a snowman
23. Drinking hot cocoa and playing Christmas songs on the piano
24. Opening up Christmas Eve gifts
25. Enjoying Christmas Day

Activities on our list that we didn’t do: 
Seeing the lights at Dana Point
Visiting Jungle Bells at the San Diego Zoo (super sad about this one!)
Selfies with Santa at the Irvine Spectrum
Victorian Christmas at Heritage Park
Sand Sculpture contest at the St. Regis
Boat rides with Santa in Dana Point and Boat Parade in Newport
Visiting Daddy at his firm Christmas party
Ice skating (don’t know how we would have done this with the girls anyway!)

Even Jake was forced to admit that my far-fetched plan didn’t turn out so stressful after all– in fact, the month of December was one of our best months ever. If the girls could articulate their thoughts, I hope they’d say they felt the magic of Christmas…and that they won’t need permanent therapy from all the Santa visits.

Turns out, a little organization (and a touch of crazy) isn’t such a bad thing, after all.

Lots of love,

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