Catching the Christmas Spirit

After a crazy busy October & November, December has been a welcome slow down period. We were able to have some family fun and focus on the true gift of Jesus' birth.

One of our 1st Christmas activities of the year was going out to look at Christmas lights around town and finishing with some hot chocolate.

Drinking hot chocolate

The next weekend we went to the Early Childhood Resource Center for a Morning with Santa. First we took a few Christmas tree pictures.

 It went from a look of confusion to a jumping party within seconds. And believe it or not these are the 2 best shots.

 Then we tried it with the parents trying to restrain the kids, but it didn't work much better. The kids were too excited for the upcoming Christmas festivities, so we made our way to the center.

 They colored gingerbread men, played with glitter play doh, made fruit loop candy canes and sat on Santa's lap. When we got to the Santa room Nora became quite timid, but with the help of holding Sawyer's hand she did a great job walking to him and sitting on his lap. Sawyer was super excited to see Santa. He doesn't really know what Santa does, but he loves any kind of mascot/person in costume so he was happy to sit on the jolly man's lap.

I know this picture is blurry, but I just die seeing them holding hands and Nora having her other hand in her back pocket

Making fruit loop candy canes.

And to round out our Christmas fun at home we had a birthday party for Jesus complete with reading the story of Jesus' birth and opening a few gifts.

 Opening the stockings

on to the gifts

Nora loving her Abby Cadabby doll and new apron 

Sawyer bouncing away on his new ball…perfect way to get the energy out during the cold winter months

Our church has a wonderful ministry called the 3 Wise Man Shop in which the children of the church and their friends get to pick out a gift for their parents. The kids had a blast visiting the shop all by themselves and picking out a gift for Mommy and Daddy. Sawyer could hardly contain himself he wanted to tell us what the gifts were when we picked him up, but he held it together for a few days until it was time to open gifts. Sawyer got Mommy a hat/glove/scarf set and he said he picked it out so Mommy could play in the snow with him. Nora gave Mommy a cookie sheet and cookie dough mix because she has a sweet tooth just like her Momma. They were very thoughtful gifts for a 2 and 3 year old. Then Daddy opened his gifts and it was a different story…Nora gave Daddy an oil lantern (you know for all the times the power goes out, or not :) and Sawyer gave Daddy a neon green lava lamp :) Sawyer was very excited about the lava lamp! It's always so funny to see what their little minds decide is the perfect gift! Funny enough there was a time that Kyle did love a good lava lamp. In fact I think that's what I gave him for high school graduation and he had it all through college :)