'Tis the Season~

It's time for the best time of year! I love Christmas time! It's the only time of year I listen to Johnny Mathis, Alabama, and Vince Gill, oh yeah, and the Osmond's OF COURSE!! It's the only time I want snow and the only time I spend GADS of money just because! I love it! Growing up we had great Christmas'! My parents always did so good! So good, in fact, we are still wondering why they aren't giving us gifts for 12 days of Christmas, boxes of cold cereal as presents and we are still all looking for our Easter baskets...but that's another story! I want my kids to look back on their Christmas' with that same joy! I have been trying out different traditions each year to try to get going. So far, we have putting up the tree the day after Thanksgiving and gingerbread houses sometime during the month. Audrey had a little helper

I love this picture even though me and Lily are cut off. My girls are so cute!!Lily knew just what to do!

I don't want it to just be about getting presents, I want it more about family time and love. So this year I am more on top of it (a little) and I found a wooden Advent calendar and I put an activity in each day with a small ornament to hang on it (it's a Christmas tree). That is pretty ambitious of me and I hope we can keep it going. So far, the girls have been pretty excited to see what we are doing that day. They aren't all big things, there is reading Christmas stories and watching Christmas movies but there is also going to Temple Square, shopping for each other, seeing Santa etc. Today's activity was making reindeer cookies. They weren't as big of a hit as I thought they might be but they are cute! Aren't they sooo cute?!? The reindeer, too!!:)Audrey need nourishment after all that hard work!

Yesterday we read a Christmas story

This is what happened....

ElRey found us all dead to the world when he came home! On the 1st we talked about doing this. I used the scripture in Helaman where Samuel the Lamanite is telling the Nephites what signs to look for that will tell them that Christ is born and then said that these activities are 'signs' of His coming birthday that we celebrate. I thought that was a pretty good idea, I'm pretty proud of that one! So, if any of you have cool tradition ideas you want to share feel free! I am always looking! It's amazing to think how hard our parents worked to make it special when we just expected it. Now its our turn and its harder than it looked!! So thanks, parents, for making awesome memories for us that we all hope we can continue with our kids!!