Christmas Surprises

I have mentioned to some of you that I am doing a surprise every day this month with my kids. They have been just simple things to add a little fun and anticipation to our day and hopefully create some memories. Even Torsten is loving it, which makes my mother heart happy.

Most of the surprises I've done so far have involved some kind of riddle or "hunt". We always hide our stockings and Easter baskets too because the kids love the thrill of the hunt almost more than the catch.

Here is one of the riddles I made for them to find Christmas socks. (I knew Torsten wouldn't want Christmas socks so I got him some badly needed dress socks.)After decoding and unscrambling words, they ran to the Christmas tree where they found a baggie with the "se wi ng de sk" cards to be arranged in the proper order. Then in my sewing desk drawer, they found the socks.

We had a similar hunt involving yellow sticky notes with arrows and dialogue written from the perspective of a nutcracker on them. After following the sticky notes trail out to the deck, Taylor was the first to spot a new nutcracker to add to our collection, hiding on the hill next to our house.

Another day I had the kids leave the living room then come back a few minutes later. They had to study our Christmas tree very carefully and look for anything new or out of place. (They love those I Spy books so this was right in their element.) Nestled in the branches were 3 new red bird ornaments. The kids were so excited- isn't it fun when kids appreciate small things like that? Well, I told them to look again and this time their sharp eyes spotted the addition of 5 lifesaver candy canes to the tree. (The candy canes that were all ready on the tree were sour patch brand candy canes that look very similar.) I told them those 5 canes were for them to have as a treat. Yes, we eat a lot of candy canes this time of year. :-}

I have to admit I didn't do a surprise on Tuesday because I had a terrible headache/migraine that refused to go away, but I think the kids excused me for that. We have some fun outings planned as surprises too, but I won't reveal them yet because I know Hailey is a regular reader of my blog. Hi Hailey!