THE SMITH FAMILY: Christmas Vacation Bucket List

This year the girl's winter vacation started pretty early. Their last day of school was December 16th, which gave us a full week before Christmas off. I'm not complaining. In fact, it was welcome break from the hectic pace and schedules we have been maintaining lately.

The first day we literally just vegged out. Dave was out of town on business so the girls and I slept in and literally never left the house. We were all just happy to watch movies, read books, and basically have nothing to do.

Of course, being the busy-body that I am, I can't go for too long "doing nothing" so we made a Christmas bucket list to get us in the spirit of the season. And we have pretty much done it all!

1-Make cake balls - we did a big batch of red velvet and froze half of them.

2-Listen to Christmas music - loved the "Holiday music" channel on DirecTV

3-Write a letter to Santa and take it Macy's Believe mailbox - Paige wrote the cutest letter and even drew a picture, too bad I didn't make a copy before we mailed it.

4-Put together gifts for friends and neighbors - the girls helped to make IBC "Root Deers"

5-Read Christmas stories - this year I put all our Christmas storybooks in a big basket under our Christmas tree, so we would remember to read the stories throughout the season.

6-Frost Christmas cookies - we did this on a couple of occasions, some for us, some for friends, some for Santa.

7-Watch a Christmas movie - first time the girls watched "It's a Wonderful Life" We also watched another classic called "The Search for Santa Paws."

8-Make gingerbread trains

9-Sing Christmas carols, read Luke 1 - both girls learned to play some Christmas songs on the piano, so we actually had accompaniment this year. Paige did Up on the House Top and Silent Night. Ashley can play the simplified version of many of the hymns, but also played Samuel Tells of Baby Jesus and The Carol of the Bells.

10-Play a game -we have a new favorite game called SPOT IT. It is so fun, for all ages, and you can play 5 different games with it. The makers of Spot It also happen to make another fun, simple but addictive game called Double Shutter.