At the zoo today my friend was telling me how her daughter is already having anxiety about Christmas being over. She said they were even thinking of celebrating Chanukah this year just to spread it out a little and avoid the whole ONE BIG DAY thing. It made me think about the genius of advent calendars for spreading out the fun of the Holidays over a longer period of time.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the advent calendar is really a perfect thing. They are beautiful, creative and hold tiny little treats in them that get to be opened one-a-day, working up to Christmas. What could be better than that? Some people put candies or small presents in their advent calendars, but the really great thing about them is you can create your own advent calendar tradition. You can also make an advent calendar out of just about anything. I've seen some really beautiful and cool home-made advent calendars.

Here are my best ideas both for advent calendars you can make and what to put inside them:

The Turkey's back in the fridge waiting to be pulled out for sandwiches, the family's in a tryptophan-induced stupor. OK, time to figure out what we're doing for the rest of the weekend!

This weekend will be a bunch of Christmas Tree lightings and Santas will be ready to hear children's wishes. In our Holiday Guide you'll also find lots of other holiday activities like visiting the Department Store Holiday Windows and Holiday Train Shows. Plus there's the opening festival of the new Children's Center at the 42nd St Library.

Here are some other interesting events and activities to do with the kids this weekend:

When I was a kid I basically lived at the Jefferson Market Library. We climbed on the bronze oxen sculpture (the things we let kids do in the 70s), watched movies in their little viewing room and worked my way through the books, literally, starting from A. It's a great children's library. But, there are shamefully few great children's libraries in New York City and last year they closed the main children's center at the Donnell Library which was a double shame. But I'm super excited to hear that they are opening a beautiful, new Children's Library Center at the 42nd St. main library. WOW!

We have more up-to-date posts about volunteering with kids in NYC in our Holiday Guide.

Reader, Susan, asked me if I knew of any places for families to volunteer around the Holiday time. Her idea was to get a couple of families together in her neighborhood to all volunteer together. That sounds like a great way to teach children about the importance of helping others and making it a fun community activity at the same time.

There are always so many opportunities around the city--even I find it overwhelming, but there are actually some great resources and websites that make it easy to find a good program to fit your location, child's age and interests to do some holiday giving.

Two last-minute updates I wanted to share:

South Street Seaport Ice Skating Rink, which was supposed to open tomorrow, Friday, November 28th has been postponed. The rink is not set up yet. I'll keep you posted.

Also, I got a great tip from my friend, Jonathan, last night on how to see the giant Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons up close without the crowds of the inflation station.

There's so much new stuff going on, I just wanted to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with this brief message explaining some of the happenings:

Story Maps
You may have noticed the NYC map added to our left sidebar. It's not just any map, it's actually a very cool tool created by local news site Outside.In that let's you search for our stories by map. Each marker on the map represents a place we have written about. Click on the marker and you'll get a pop-up of every post we've written about that place. Just click on the story title to go to the article. It's pretty cool. You can zoom in to the part of the city you want to find places or events and find stories from as far back as 6 months ago by changing the time-frame at the top of the map (which is set by default to one week). I'm testing this feature out and want to know if you all find it useful or not, so please shoot me an email and let me know if you'd like to see more mapping tools like this.

Exergaming is all the rage now with parents (and corporations) trying to figure out how to get kids up off the couch and moving. The Wii and Xbox Kinect are the biggest sensation in exergaming, finally allowing parents to feel less guilty about hours spent in front of the TV, but there are lots of other fun games that get kids moving while they are having fun playing. And, hey, it's not so bad for mom and dad to play along and get a little exercise too. I've been surprised at how out of breath I can get from playing these games and you don't have to spend a lot.

Top 5 Games that get kids moving:

The UK's Guardian ran a story this week titled "NYC fears return to dark days of the Seventies as financial crisis bites".   Having grown up here in the 1970's, an article like this does little to scare me, lets also remember that the 70's were fun!  The idea of the city I love becoming cheap, edgy and filled with bell bottoms and flower patterns sounds really exciting.  Sure sure, the crime (and polyester) were bad things and I really don't want to see them return but I can't help but see the silver lining of this economy - cutting down on useless consumerism (btw, Nov. 28 is Buy Nothing Day), conserving energy, relying on creativity like swapping and community to fill in the gaps.  Just like I am constantly amazed at how flexible and resilient my two year old can be when I put her to the challenge (like this past weekend when I had her up till 11PM doing karaoke), NYers are way too crafty and spirited to let a dip in the Dow turn us into fearful whiners.  So to all those across the pond who are worried about us slipping back into Serpico territory, fuhgetaboutit, we are fine!  Keep reading for that article plus posts on which strollers can be emotionally impovershing, tips on how to avoid bottle mouth, why teens online is a good thing, which gift cards to avoid this holiday season, the very sad fate of Project Runway and more.