Friday, December 14, 2012

It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas

We are slowly getting ready for Christmas this year.  I think Russell and I finally got all of our shopping done and now we are just working on the homemade gifts and trying to get them done before Christmas Eve.  Any way I kind of don't like the whole worldly aspect of Christmas so we tried to get that out of the way fast so we could enjoy the real reason for the season.  I have been doing Sharing Time this month and it is all about Christ, His birth and life and how He is the Son of God.  I think that is so perfect for this Christmas season because we all need to remember why we celebrate Christmas and what Christ has done for us. 

This year instead of making a gingerbread house like we always do, we wanted to remember Jesus Christ's birth and made a gingerbread Nativity.

I think it turned out really cute. I love the marshmallow sheep and the candy bar donkey.  All of the people are made out of gumdrops.  We actually made these Nativities at Family Home Evening with my family.  They were fun to make.  One thing about it though is I have to watch the kids closely because I can see little bite marks taken out of the sheep.  The other day I even caught Colby with the baby Jesus in his hand and he had taken a bite out of the gum drop head.  I told Colby he was bad for eating Baby Jesus and he felt bad. 

We also had fun decorating our Christmas Tree:


We actually did this a couple days after Thanksgiving.  The kids had fun hanging the ornaments and especially loved helping Dad hang the star. 

Here is our finished tree!  As you can see we decided to put the tree in front of the front door this year.  You might think that is a little weird but we hardly ever use our front door anyway so why not utilize the space.  Besides that, we didn't really have anywhere else to put it.  We just tell anyone that comes over to use the side door like we do.  And you can see in that picture that my belly is continuing to grow!  Only about 45 days to go.  I can't believe how fast it has gone by and I haven't even made anything for the new baby yet.  Poor little third child gets all the hand me downs.  That is my goal though after Christmas is to make a few things for the baby.

We also decided to do the 12 Days of Christmas for one of the families in our ward.  We just found out that the parents of this family are separating and so we thought it would be good to do a few kind things for them this year.  It has been fun planning what to do and getting ready.  We started the first day on the 13th so that the 12 days will be done on Christmas Eve.  Then today we found out that they are moving!  So when Russell went to drop off the package for the day he saw them loading stuff up to move it so he had to give away our secret so that we could find out their new address so we could continue with the rest of the days.  The mom was really grateful and thankful for our service.  Even though it is not a secret anymore, we are still excited to give the packages to them.

We have been talking about Baby Jesus with Colby and Emily and now anytime Colby sees a baby in a picture, he says it is Baby Jesus Christ.  The other day, he was setting on my lap and he patted my belly and said "Baby Brother!"  I said "Yeah, what should we name baby brother?"  Without missing a beat Colby said "Baby Jesus Christ!"  I had to laugh a little bit and even though we won't name the baby Jesus Christ, it was a good suggestion from a 20 month old soon to be big brother!

And on a funny note, my family has a white elephant Christmas party each year and this year I made the funniest present ever:
Yep, Christmas PJ's of half naked men!  My family will probably hate them but I think they are hilarious!!!  I made them to fit my great model, Russell, and a drawstring instead of elastic so they should fit anyone that gets them.  I can't wait to see the look on the face of the one that gets it.  I am hoping they go to Clint, Josh or Danny.  That would be perfect.

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