playing with his Christmas toys

Thanks Mamas and Papas for the awesome Christmas gift; Chase loves it!

We Love Christmas!

Right after Thanksgiving I'm begging Bruce to go get our Christmas tree! I love this time of year and want to enjoy it as long as possible! So, we set off with Gramma and Granpapas to find our tree and the boys were all excited to help...

 Chase couldn't wait to get the Christmas decorations out and kept peeking in the bins each day until I said we could put them up. He was especially anxious to put up the star on the tree...he and daddy have done that together for the past few years.

 Chase is loving pre-school and doing really well! He was VERY excited about this gingerbread house he made today and the teachers said he was very focused and intent on making it perfect! He was excited to take a picture and share it with daddy.

 Also exciting about Christmas...it means I'm almost done with pregnancy! I've only got about 7 or 8 weeks left and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm not a fan of pregnancy, so I'm ready to be done with all the uncomfortableness! We still have a lot to do to get ready for our baby girl and other than some fancy church dresses and shoes (I can't get enough of those baby girl dress clothes!) we don't really have anything yet! Oh darn, I guess I'll have to go shopping for baby girl clothes...! ;)

making Christmas

 I made a Christmas wrapping paper wreath (super easy), and I really wanted to do an advent calendar with the boys this year, so I found one that was really easy to make and that I didn't have to store (not ready to commit yet!).  This was a cute idea to make cones from wrapping paper then tie them to branches. Each of the cones have a scripture or quote having to do with Christmas inside, and every few days the boys also get some type of surprise (a new book, a Christmas movie, special activity, etc.). It's been fun and the boys like counting down to Christmas!

We finally got real stockings this year! I had everyone's name put on them and even baby Tempe has one! The boys are a little too into the tree this year and so I wasn't too eager to put too many decorations on it. Especially when I'm not really thrilled about having to clean all this up and put it away in a couple weeks (that's why I get my tree the weekend after Thanksgiving...so we can enjoy it longer!).