McManus Christmas Jar: A New Tradition

I promised that I'd share some of our new Christmas traditions with you, so here we go! I heard about this one at a Mom's get together(I also saw a facebook friend doing this too). You can call it your family Christmas Box or Jar. I found a cheap jar at Hobby Lobby so it became the McManus Family Christmas Jar.
I wrote little things we can do together as a family on little sheets of paper and place them in the jar. Every couple of days we pick something out of the jar and do it. For example: make Christmas cards, watch a Christmas movie in our pj's and drink hot chocolate, go see Christmas lights, make some cookies and take them to a neighbor, etc. We've already done a couple of the activities from the jar. I look forward to posting the rest as we do them. Enjoy!

Watch a Christmas movie
Make presents for Daddy's coworkers.
We made Gowalla coasters for everyone's desks (and some yummy puppy chow)
Go on the neighborhood hayride
(Waiting for the tractor to pick us up)
Read a Christmas book together.
Hang Christmas lights with Daddy
Alexis was a big help

Have a family game night!
Buy a present for someone who really needs one.
We bought presents for two boys in the Austin City Foster Care system. Connor and Bryce helped pick out the perfect gifts!
Build a Gingerbread House together.
Dude that was the first time I can remember building a gingerbread house. All was going well until the boys piled on 2 tons of candy on those little roof pieces. It is barely holding on and we'll see if it stays together.

Go see Christmas lights.
We did this while my Daddy and Shanni were in town. At a local park they put on a spectacular Christmas laser light show. We will go see it again!
Go see Christmas lights again.
I told you that we'd go see the show again. This time we went with a family from Adam's work. They have 3 kiddos; 5, 3, and 1. The kids had a great time, dancing, running, and playing on the playground. It was a fantastic night!
Make homemade Christmas cards.
(Alexis was a great cheerleader!)
Make snowflakes!
The boys couldn't have been more excited about unlimited amount of time spent with scissors and paper. And to be honest I had a blast making snowflakes too. I can't remember the last time I made them. (We also all had a blast making a complete mess!)



I'm loving these fun family activities and have decided that we need to do more random fun activities more often.