Even though I’ve only missed one day since Holidailies started I feel like I’m so far behind on keeping up to date on stuff. I don’t want to let my advent activities slip away without remembering them so I’ll just fill you in on that.

On day 7 the activity was one that sounds strange at first: Putting shoes by the door. Although we’re not German, many years ago I “met” a lot of moms on a big forum that no longer exists, and we all picked up different things from each other. A friend of mine whose family is German told us all about Saint Nicholas Day where children lay their shoes by the door and in the morning they find some small goodies in them. Now in all honesty we were late – the day is actually the 5th but we were lucky because the elves left the kids some very nice things. They woke up in the morning to find hair accessories, notebooks (a hot commodity around here!), and of course a bit of candy.

Day 8 was one of those days where I was trying very hard to embrace winter since we have a lot of it left, so I planned for our activity to be good for a little post-sledding. That was fun and went well. When we came in, the advent revealed that we would have big steaming mugs of hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows.

Day 9 kind of slipped by quickly so I made the activity a quiet one, reading some Christmas books in bed which was nice. Alas, I have no pictures since I was busy reading.

Today was day 10 and I decided it was a good time for something very straightforward and simple. On the one hand it’s Friday so we can hopefully sleep in at least a little bit tomorrow but on the other hand it’s also the end of the week and we were all tired. I ended up choosing to put on a Christmas special in the evening and we all watched it before getting the kids to bed. I tossed in one of my favorites, the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and it never loses its charm.

We should have some good advent stuff this weekend if everything goes well.

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I ended up enjoying myself so much as I watched Winnie run free at the park that I did it again yesterday and today. I made sure to bring my cameras with me and I got some pictures and video. I was pretty nervous doing it all by myself but she did great. The fact that I brought cheese encouraged her to come back when I called too.

I even got video showing her mad running skillz.

Today was even better. We were alone again and running, playing, and throwing sticks when all of a sudden I saw her dog friend from the other day coming out of the woods. Winnie didn’t notice at first since I was busy holding a stick but when she turned and saw the Mastiff her body tensed up in that “oh my GOD!” kind of joyful way, then she pretty much hurled herself across the park; I’m not entirely convinced that her feet touched the ground.

Even though Ginger the Mastiff was already tired from a long walk in the woods with her owner, they both played for awhile and spent some time lazing about in the snow.

It’s been fabulous seeing how easy it is to wear her out with just a nice walk, a wild romp, a lot of snow, and a walk back home. Between that and the fact that it’s almost 11 pm and Winnie’s not a night owl, she’s passed out directly behind my chair and I think she might actually be snoring.

Which is my cue to go chill out a bit and then think about bed!