Christmas Update

Well, I decided to take a break from blogland over Christmas because my wonderful hubby took a lot of time off from work so we had a lot of family time. It was the best way to spend the Christmas season. Crud...now I can hear Jackson waking up from his nap so I will just leave you with some pictures as I try to corral him:) I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I can not wait for AGCI to open up next week!

decorating the tree with daddy
nothing like playing in a box

decorating the gingerbread house

No mommy, I am not eating ALL of the M&Ms

you can tell his mouth is full of candy....

it was supposed to be a gingerbread church with stained glass.......

our gingerbread family minus one.....



That's Rex from Toy Story....he was carjacked shortly after this photo


He didn't have on his cute Christmas jammies because he was sick and well we will just say they were dirty:)

I got some awesome gifts this year and will post about them next time:)

Amy Bottomly inspires me again:)

Amy and her husband Josh have written a book! I just went to the website and read the introduction and I can not wait until it comes out! This is really going to be great......but I have come to the conclusion that everything Mrs. Bottomly does is great:) Check it out.

Traditions

Well, the tree is up, the decorations are all out, most of my shopping is done, and the lights are on the house (but at this moment not working due to some blown fuse? ask my husband). I absolutely love this time of year because we try and spend all of our time enjoying each other and really trying to remember why we celebrate this holiday. I am a huge fan of traditions and we have started many that go on throughout the year but Christmas traditions are my favorite.

Since this is only Jackson's second Christmas we don't have many traditions yet or I guess the things we did last year will become traditions when we do them again this year:) My favorite is Advent. We light the candles and read the passages out of the bible after dinner and talk about what they mean. Then we sing some Christmas carols (Jackson absolutely loves to sing and we are always singing pretty much 24/7). This year we got Jackson the little people nativity set and we have been acting out the Christmas story during advent as well. Last night though, I found one of the wise men in Mary's spot in the manger so we still have some work to do:) Some other things we plan on doing again this year is making our own gingerbread house from scratch, making hot chocolate and going out in the car to look at Christmas lights, going to see Santa, and watching lots of Christmas movies together.

I would love to add some more fun to our holiday and really be able to teach our kids that Christmas is not all about presents. So, help me out, What are some of your families traditions? What do you do to show your children the reason for the season?


These pictures are all from last year but I promise to put up current ones before Christmas:)

We tried to make a replica of our house. We even made our
gingerbread family:) Jackson's is crawling with a diaper on.

just a quick update

Ok I have been gone for like a week, well not really gone just not writing:) I have a post in mind but haven't gotten the time to write about it yet! So anyways, the point really is that we are UNOFFICIALLY 15!!! Yep that's right we made a huge jump down yesterday! I am so excited I can barely breathe! We are supposed to get our official numbers today but they won't be correct since they had like 6 referrals yesterday and you don't officially go down until all the families get their paperwork turned back in so that is kinda a bummer, but if my subtracting and stalking is correct we are sitting pretty at 15!

Kristi J, my darling, I can not believe you are a single digit!!! Are you like 6 or 7 now?? AHHH!