'Tis the Season!

December 1st. Who would have thought it, where on earth has 2011 gone?! 

The start of the month has meant things have been taken to a whole other level today, we've reached fever pitch. The excitement is palpable. If I didn't know better I would say that things can't get much more intense, but well, we know it can and will don't we? 

At ages 4 and 5 my children are at a beautiful age for Christmas, they believe everything you say and they are just so excited. They're sucking up the Christmas stories this year and have been desperate for December 1st for weeks. It's all about the calenders you see, of which we have five. Yes, you read it write, five. Four of them belong to the kids!  Of course there is the obligatory chocolate ones - and what is wrong with chocolate before breakfast I ask you?! A rather fetching cardboard school nativity scene and then the nice people at Playmobil sent me this;

A Playmobil advent calender! What a marvelous idea, even Mr M was won over by this idea. 

As soon as the children set their eyes on it they could barely wait to open the little doors - which is why I waited until last night to show it to them, I'm not stupid. We had a few wobbles, because clearly there was one calender and two children but on the whole my children are extremely good sharers so once we had sorted out the correct order of proceedings (girl has odd days, boy has even...this was very political as he was adamant he wanted the "big" door ie 24 and she was quite happy that it meant she got first go at opening it) we were good to go.

As you can see, it's an advent calender, which we all know means you get to open one little door every day. With the Playmobil advent calenders you're building up a scene, adding little pieces each day. There is a cardboard scene inside the box which is simple to put together and from thereon in you just build it up until it eventually looks like this

The great thing about this compared to other advent calenders is that you get to play with these little toys forever, I know my children will get hours of fun out of this, although currently, Day 1, it looks like this

That post box looks a bit lonely doesn't it? I can't wait until tomorrow to see what we get, I'm slightly gutted that the children get all the fun of opening it! Having something like this to open everyday is really adding to the excitement and I would definitely recommend it.

There's a range of advent calenders including the post office - there's also dinosaurs and the knights tournament and the retail at £14.99 which I think is really reasonably priced. Playmobil is such good quality and practically indestructible as I have found several times when it's been embedded in the sole of my foot...

love & kisses

Mrs M x