Its beginning to feel a lot like...

 

CHRISTMAS!

 

Ben & I were having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year.  It may have had something to do with our being sick for two days after Thanksgiving, thus rendering us unable to get our tree the day after Thanksgiving as we normally do.  Or it could have something to do with the 70+ degree weather we've been having, or maybe just simply that my mind was not prepared for the holidays to be here yet. 

 

Whatever it stemmed from, it just didn't feel like our favorite time of year.  We decided to make it our goal this past week & weekend to get a tree up & do a little decorating, really doing the tree was all we had planned to do.  Once we got started though, I think our spirits finally got caught up in the excitement of the season & we just kept going!  Holiday wreath, lights on the house, a trip to town to see holiday lights and this week I am working on our advent calendar.  We have the study we will be doing all ready to go.  I printed verses from here and I think we will go through the 24 Old Testement stories in the Jesus Storybook Bible (a fantastic children's Bible) that lead up to Christ's birth.  Ephram of course, is still too young to understand all of this, but I think it will be a great tradition to start now & to grow with as our family grows.

 

Once we finally were feeling festive, we remembered what a blessing it was to decorate and prepare for Christmas this week together as last year, Ben was deployed and little Ephram was still a wee little peanut in my belly :) I love having both my boys with me this year!

 

Here's some of the documentation from our week...

 

the naked tree

 

 

all dolled up with yarn balls & twinkling lights :)

 

 

 

our first time to light up the house...

 

a Christmas wreath to top off my husband's amazing light job...

 

 

scoping out the pretty lights around town...a favorite tradition of ours!

 (Ephram slept through most of it this year..hah!)

 

 

My two sweet men looking so handsome (and so happy!) in their holiday duds.

 

 

 

I hope to have some updates soon on our Advent study & calendar!  I am going to build the calendar as we go this year, as clearly, I dropped the ball on getting it made before Dec 1st!