Christmas Review

 We had a great Christmas this year.  The baby was in a "get into everything" age, but it was still good.  On Christmas day we woke up and had an egg and homemade cinnamon roll breakfast and then opened our stockings.  Here is the babykin admiring his nutcracker.

 After stockings we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas.  We put together some presents that the kids got already from their grandparents.

 After a nice Christmas nap we opened our family Christmas presents.

 The boys loved their new Lions jerseys.

 We had a great family dinner together and then had some birthday cake for Jesus' birthday.

 We ended the night by making a gingerbread house.  This was by far one of my most favorite days of 2013.

I had to include these homemade ornaments that Monk made for everyone.  On mine it said, "the best mom ever."  Love that boy!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our family to yours.  I was going to move the coffee table and the ottoman away from the tree, but I decided to leave it for the picture because this is how our Christmas tree looked the whole time.  The pickle baby couldn't leave it alone so we had to keep him out.

A Christmas Babykin

Critter Barn

 One of the boys favorite things to do in the month of December is to go to a little local farm that has a live nativity and lots of animals to pet.

 The baby chicks are always a hit.

Christmas Tree

 The boys were SOOOOO excited to decorate the tree.  This is such a fun thing, but gets a little crazy with four little boys that want to help.

 The last thing that we place on our tree are ice sickles that belonged to my Grandmother.  I smile as I place each one of them on the tree and I love seeing my boys get excited about them too.  This was my FAVORITE part of my Grandma's Christmas tree when I was a child.  I love that she is a part in our Christmas tradition.

This was our first year of having a fake tree.  I missed some things of having a real tree, but there are SO many great things about an artificial one.  I am especially glad that I don't have to go under the tree to water it every day.



Advent Calendar Kick Off

 On Sunday we started our advent calendar or the "triangle tree" as the kids call it.  The boys got to open Christmas pj's and a new Christmas movie that we watched as a family.

Monk melted my heart when he said, "Mom, I just love the triangle tree."  I then asked him why and he said, "because we get to do fun things as a family."  Exactly buddy.  I hope that he feels this way until he moves out of our house.