I love smiling! Smiling's my favorite!

Well I am just exhausted from a Sunday of watching movies with Lilly.

My little cherub was puking her guts out every two hours, which left us the perfect amount of time to fit in a feature film between rides on the porcelain bus.

We watched "Parent Trap" (with Lindsay Lohan the way I prefer to picture her), "Elf," and "Polar Express."

{By the way, did y'all know that Elf and Polar Express have the exact same instrumental soundtrack? I had never noticed until we watched both of them twice in 2 days.}

And now the ol' soundtrack will not stop playing in my mind. Luckily, it's lovely background music as I drive a filthy dirty SUV to the grocery store, Walgreens, and Costco.

The kids woke up extra-early today because yesterday I hung (hanged? that sounds morbid) this:

I'm sorry.

It looks like a jumbled mess.

But it's our advent calendar. 

Every year, the kids have so much fun waking up to a new adventure I thoughtfully and carefully planned only moments before they crept downstairs.

I try to create a mix of small gifts, outings, and service/giving opportunities for each day.

For the small gifts, we give things like socks and underwear, gum and chocolates. Things that, honestly, shouldn't even be presents, but are more fun to open during advent than on Christmas morning.

Our rule of thumb is that between October and December, any necessity immediately becomes a Christmas gift.

Toothpaste.

Band-aids.

Underwear.

Toilet paper.

Dark chocolate peanut M&Ms.

You get the idea.

For our adventure days, they can be anything from ice skating, sledding, visiting snow globes at the mall, driving around looking at Christmas lights, or going to the Nuggets game because Brad has to entertain business clients and we might as well pig out on free food while we can.

And for the service days, we plan to do thoughtful things for people in our family and others who need practical help.

Honestly, I'm not likely to do much of anything unless it's scheduled and someone is holding me accountable.

Like my children.

So anyway, I'll try to chronicle some of our advent fun this December, but I'm sure I'll mostly end up blogging about my fantasy Christmas brunch menu.

Tonight, our advent activity was for the kids to put up the mini trees that go in their rooms.

We had a grand time and I was humbled as I realized they've learned nothing about balance, proportion, and color coordination.

Of course, I also entertained the possibility that my very own home is a decoratorial nightmare.

Speaking of which, Clark Grizzwold himself spent 5 hours yesterday putting up lights on the outside of our house.

Our builder decided to use these tile roof pieces, preventing humans from ever walking up there or apparently the whole thing will fall off.

So Brad and the fellow neighborhood men went in together and rented a boom lift.

It looked like a cross between those snow walkers on Hoth in "The Empire Strikes Back" and that enemy alien blaster at the end of "The Incredibles."

And it took up my entire front yard.

So there was Clark, hovering 20 feet in the air (IN THE BLOWING SNOW) for the sake of decking the halls. I'm sure it was spectacular and I appreciate that Clark's commitment to the beauty of our home extends beyond cleaning the toothpaste out of his sink.

I would've taken pictures, but I was busy cleaning up puke and whistling the Elf/Polar Express soundtrack.

I'll post pictures of the trees tomorrow.

And I am done putting quotes around movie titles.

It is a little too cumbersome for me.

Just like having a complete thought.