Pre-Christmas

Ok so I am totally behind in blogging. Maybe in the new year life will settle down a little and I can get back to regular blog post. But until that happens here is leading up to Christmas day in pictures.

Jake's school Christmas Performance

Santa was little traumatizing to the babies

Decorating Cookies

Christmas Morning

Jake's face coming down the stairs is always one of my favorite pictures to capture. The look of excitement is one to remember forever. I also love that at 4 years old he still comes down the stairs with his blankies tucked under his arm.

 Seeing his most requested toy...Mobigo...This year Jake told everyone, including Santa that he wanted a mobigo with games & batteries. Well, both his requests were fulfilled. And they are by far his most favorite things he received from Santa.

 Showing Daddy his new real tball bat

 Jason opened another playstation controller so he can finally have 2. Jake was explaining to him that now they could both play games and Jake would use the new red one while Jason used the old black one.

 Looking in our stockings...sometimes you just have to post not so great pictures of yourself to have prove that I was really there Christmas morning :)

The Night Before Christmas

Christmas Eve through pictures

Cookies

We had two cookie decorating parties this year. One with all the cousins(well...not the babies)& another with sweet friends.

Decorating with your cousins takes lots of concentration. I love these traditions we have built into our celebrations. 

When we decorated with our friends it was all snowman themed. The kids decorated cookies to look like melted snowmen. Along with having snowmen donuts for a snack. Thank you Vickie for a super fun snowman party.

Christmas Fun

I am sure there will be another post with a few more of our Christmas activities, but wanted to share these pictures for now.

One of our friends put together a ginger bread nativity making play date. It was so much fun to make these adorable nativities. I loved watching Jake concentrate so hard on making each piece of his nativity.

And then it wouldn't be Christmas without a trip to see Santa. This year we had my sister's baby Wyatt to add to Caleb & Jake's Christmas picture. We all can't believe next Christmas there will be a little Lily sitting with Santa too. This was seriously the best smile we could get on Jake's face. Yea...he doesn't do well when you tell him to smile. Oh well...hopefully next year he will have a better smile.

Lit Up

As in years past my parents come over every year to help(really my stepDad does it all) put up our Christmas lights on the outside of the house.

This year Jake was into helping. And was even out on the roof helping too. But just like his Daddy he has a small fear of heights.

O' Christmas Tree

This weekend we decorated our Christmas tree...I love our tree! It is us on a tree.

Sometimes I think I want a Martha Stewart theme tree. With beautiful matching balls & spiral ribbon wrapping through the tree. Everything else in the house would coordinate with our tree & everyone would comment on how beautiful it was. Because really isn't that the only purpose of a Martha Stewart tree...beauty?

As we decorated our tree this weekend our family of 3, with 4 year old helping hands putting all his ornaments in one spot together on the tree. Belly swollen, 8 months pregnant with our new baby girl. I knew that we would always have our Christmas tree. Full of memories & fun. Not everything perfect or in the "right" spot. This tree is us & just looking at each ornament brought back every memory from that year.

We have the little house..."New Home" 2002...which was also the same year Jason proposed to me. How special that we spent our first Christmas in our new house and he put a gourgeous ring on my finger and asked me to be his wife forever.

The other ornaments throughout the years that we started collecting together.

The 25 classic cars that cover our tree(for our 1st Christmas were really all we had on our tree). Jason's mom started buying him the Hallmark classic car collection when he was a little boy. And every year as soon as Christmas ornaments are out she gets him his new car for the year.

The one from Jake's 1st Christmas...to celebrate our tiny 2 month old little boy who changed our world the day he was born.

And then there are the others...Some my mom buys when she sees one I might like & some we buy when we see them at the store. And every year along with Jason's car my mother-in-law picks out an ornament for me & gets Jake a new ornament (or 2).

So when you come to my house and see our beautiful tree full of memories...I hope you will see the life that has been lived through the ornaments on our tree. The blessings we have experienced over the years are all displayed on that tree.

CHRISTmas Focus

I love family traditions...carrying on one's from my own childhood and adding lots more to our new family. Christmas is the perfect time for traditions and adding new one's too.
But along with our fun traditions of elf on the shelf, reindeer food, & hot chocolate movie nights I want to be adding traditions that help us to keep our focus on Jesus. He is the real reason we celebrate Christmas after all. I want to make sure that Jake understands that we don't just have Christmas to get presents. There is so much more we should have our focus on at this time. And those things are so much more important then the gifts under the tree(although, they are fun too & will be including in our Christmas celebration).

Yesterday we kicked off our Christmas Advent count down. I searched pinterest & several other places on the internet & found lots of very cute ways of counting down, but just wasn't sure what I wanted to use.

We have started Truth in the Tinsel an Advent experience for little hands. It looks like it is going to be lots of fun to do with Jake each day. It includes a short reading(today we read Isiah 9:2-7) & then there is an ornament craft to go with it. All the crafts are pretty simple & include most things you already have around your house. Along with a short little section to talk about what you read and a suggestion to do more together.Truth in the Tinsel is great for us to do as a family each morning.  Last year we did a Jesse tree & a family advent book I had picked up at Lifeway. I am still doing the Jesse tree devotions as part of my daily quiet time. The Jesse tree devotion is by Ann Voskamp(if you know me, you know how wonderful I think Ann is) and a great way to really focus on getting into the spirit of real Christmas. And her devotional is free!

I also wanted to have fun things to do each day as we counted down. A fun little activity we could do sometime throughout the day. Here is our list of things we will be doing over the next month.
1. Open a book-I love the idea of counting down to Christmas with 25 books, but we only have 8 Christmas books around our house. So I wrapped those 8 and spread throughout the month I have included open a book.
2. Make a fun breakfast with Mommy(we made red velvet pancakes this morning...not enough red food coloring, but they still tasted yummy).
3. Open a book
4. Decorate tree with hot chocolate & a fire(w got our tree last week, but have been waiting for daddy to be home to decorate it)
5. Polar Express Movie pj & hot chocolate party
6. Buy yearly ornament
7. Shop for Hope for Christmas
8. Make gingerbread nativity
9. Visit Santa
10. Journey through Bethlehem
11. Fun trip with mommy & daddy(haven't decided if we will do Stone Mountain Christmas or Pettite Creek)
12. Write Letter to Santa
13. Bring letter to the Macy's Believe Santa mail box
14. Drive around neighborhood to see lights
15. Make ice cream cone trees
16. Open book
17. Cookie decorating party
18. Christmas activity with Daddy
19.  Open book
20. Make neighborhood gifts
21. Deliver gifts for neighbors
22. Make reindeer food
23. Jesus birthday party
24. Church & visits with family
25. Read the Christmas story & open presents

So it lead me to want to include both our advent activity and our fun activities into the same Christmas countdown. Each day of our advent activity we make a craft and each craft needs certain materials(Amanda has included a list of all the materials you need along with a list by day in Truth in the Tinsel...really no thinking on my party). I didn't want to have to be searching around for our materials each day before we could sit down and do our activity. I was also trying to use what I had around the house(I was trying to hurry and get it all together on the 30th in preparation for the 1st). And from this was born our white lunch bag Christmas countdown. In each bag is our print out from Truth in the Tinsel & the materials we will need for our craft. On the front of the bag I made a small pocket out of scrapbook paper and tucked a tag into the pocket. On the tag is written the activity we will do each day. In a few of the bags there are also small treats like a chocolate kiss or Christmas sticker that I thought Jake would like finding in the bags too.