Christmas Decor

Since most of you didn't get to visit our house during the holidays this year, I thought I would post some photos of some of my favorite Christmasy spots around the house.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Morning

We had a wonderful Christmas morning! 

We started with a sweet family time reading through our entire Advent Book (singing Christmas carols as they fit in with the story), and then had the kids bring their shepherds pouches and empty them in front of the manger. They have worked hard all month earning money to put in their pouches, and they were excited to see how much they had collected together. We combined all of the money, with a matching amount from Mom & Dad, and used it to support some local charities that we know and admire.

Then it was time to give our gifts for each other! Again this year, Lee Anna very thoughtfully made personal, homemade gifts for each of us. She followed up last year's Sir Sawyer with a new adventure about her brother, Cowboy Sawyer! 

And this year she also wrote a book for Sarah Claire. She chose a theme she knew her sister would love--puppies in a pet shop!

It's a sweet book, perfect for a preschooler, that even includes some activity pages at the back. It has already been requested as a read-aloud by Sarah Claire several times this week, and I'm sure there will be many, many more readings of Barky and Friends.

They were also excited about their other gifts, like Lee Anna's new jogging suit and Sawyer's new Wii game (the reason for the intense I-don't-even-realize-I'm-sticking-my-tongue-out concentration).

And we are all having a blast with this new marble track! I have wanted to get them one of these for a few years, and I was so excited when we found a good deal on one earlier this month. We have already spent hours building and rebuilding different tracks and just watching those marbles roll all over the place. I think this might be one of my favorite kid toys ever. I might have even gone in Sarah Claire's room to play with it once or twice when there were no kids around.

And yes, these Nerf guns were a hit, too! Sawyer was recently introduced to the world of Nerf at a friend's house, so he is beyond excited that now we can have Nerf wars at our house, too. I'm pretty sure that we are going to find Nerf darts EVERYWHERE when we get ready to move out of here, but I love seeing how much fun they're having! They spent a good deal of time doing target practice yesterday, first aiming at some darts that were stuck on the door, which of course resulted in lots more darts stuck on the door!

After a while, Daddy redirected them to a new target--King Tut's nose! One of our history books has a lovely photo of King Tut on the front, so they spent a good while trying to stick a dart on his shiny gold nose.

The rest of the day seems to have gone largely unphotographed, but we got to skype with family, and had several friends come by to visit. We are so grateful for sweet family memories and most of all for the gift of Christmas!

Christmas Smiles

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Christmas Fun!

We are getting into the Christmas spirit around here...

and we've got the matching outfits to prove it!

Here are a few of the things we've been doing to celebrate the season:

We made our annual Christmas countdown chain on Dec. 1. I can't believe how few links are left already!

In the photo above the chain, the kids are listening to Mimi read them a chapter from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever over skype. They loved hearing that story, definitely a family favorite!

The gingerbread playdough has gotten hours and hours of playtime since we made it last week. I'm so glad when they pull it out because it makes the house smell so good!

Each child decorated a picture frame ornament to put on our Christmas tree. I'll try to post a shot of the finished products soon.

And, after they had made dozens and dozens of playdough gingerbread cookies, it was time for the real thing!

 Everyone helped mix up our gingerbread dough, and they all took turns decorating the little men.

It was quite a creative and varied collection of gingerbread "townspeople," as Lee Anna called them.

We are reading through our Advent book, as we have in years past, and hearing a little more of the story each night as we get closer to the 25th. I'm so grateful for the chance to see and experience the story through the eyes of these sweet children.