Let the Festivities Begin!!

I love this time of year!! I love the spirit of this time. I love the opportunity to focus more on Christ. And I love the family traditions we participate in. They are some of my favorite. So here's how we've started our holiday season.


First of all, look at these cute kids!! They're smiling because they had just eaten a fabulous Thanksgiving meal.



Speaking of Thanksgiving, we celebrated at Matt's Aunt Kris's house. Good company, delicious food and scrumptious pies. We homemade three pies, and here are two of our beautiful creations (okay the second one is actually a chocolate-peanut butter cake; I couldn't pass it up). YUMMY!!



From the Thanksgiving feast we headed to our house to play games and watch football with Matt's parents and brothers. The favorite game of the evening..."Throw Madeleine on the bean bag" as self-named by Madeleine.





I think most of you will be shocked to hear that I actually woke up bright and early Black Friday and went shopping. Yep, I did it and it was totally worth it. I got two toddler bikes for $65 dollars. Two for one basically. It was totally worth the lack of sleep and the long lines. I got a few other things and now I think I'm converted. So I'll see ya all bright and early next year!


During our Thanksgiving weekend we also enjoyed a second Thanksgiving feast with my extended family on my mom's side. We had family in from Oregon, Georgia, and Alaska. It was fun to chat and even get in a game of basketball. Here's my mom's entire family, except for her brother who passed away a few years ago.





My wonderful husband also spent a day during Thanksgiving weekend risking his life to put Christmas lights on our house. Here's a picture of the less risky portion of the lighting process. Our roof is really up there, so it's always an adventure to hang the lights. Madeleine was so excited to help and would've headed up on the roof if I let her.



My favorite part of the picture is the pose by Madeleine. She was ready for this picture.



Here's our final product. Nothing fancy but I love it.




One of my favorite traditions is heading out to pick our Christmas tree. I love real trees and this year we got the perfect one. I don't think I've seen one better. The girls were very excited to decorate it and they did a great job.





As Madeleine would put the ornaments on, Tori would then take them off. By the time they were done we had ornaments on the tree, on the floor and only on a few branches.




Madeleine even made sure that all the red balls were together and all the silver balls were together.



When the girls went to bed, Matt and I finished the decorating and I love it! Now it just needs some presents.



We've had a great start to the holiday and can't wait for the fun that awaits.