Lots of Christmas happenings!

Here I thought I had all the time in the world to prepare for Christmas.  Most of the shopping was done, as well as the decorations put out, and I thought I had lots of time for baking, mailing out Christmas cards, watching classic Christmas movies and enjoying good ol' family fashion fun.  Boy... was I wrong!

Don't get me wrong, my family and I had a fabulous month!  Even though my husband and I both had to work full time and the kids were at school until the past two weeks ago, we have managed to squeeze in holiday fun.

We grew candy canes (yes, you read that right), we had two elves come and stay with us until Christmas, we enjoyed hot chocolate and a couple of classic movies, we put lights up on the house, frosted a few cookies, decorated gingerbread houses and even went on a version of The Polar Express!  The whole month was so magical.  Just busy.  And it went FAST.

Thankfully I was able to capture a lot of our fun moments.  Check it out!

This year's family portrait at Schilter's Family Farm where we got our Christmas tree on December 3rd.

My husband did an amazing job on our house this year with the lights.  Too bad it took him to change out four strands of lights that he had already checked.  As soon as he checked them and got them on the house, they instantly burned out.  He was a trooper though and didn't give up.  And this is after he had shoulder surgery back in October!

Even my son helped out his dad with the lights during the day.

My kids enjoyed hot chocolate and made a gingerbread house too!

And after a few days of working on the lights like I said, our house was complete....

I even got festive and put on my Christmas socks that I found at Target (love!) and enjoyed candy canes and Christmas classics....

And the kids had such a great time with our visiting elves from the North Pole!  Some days the elves even brought little trinkets with them to give to the kids.

And Christmas time wouldn't be complete without a visit to see Santa and a little holiday baking!

Even our dogs got into the holiday spirit!

But what I think my kids enjoyed the most about this holiday season was our Polar Express experience...

and planting peppermint rounds that would later grow into candy canes!

I even had a little holiday fun myself, by playing with a couple of light tutorials I had learned!

Anyway, if you are still reading this, I really appreciate you sticking through.  I just wanted to share with you our way of celebrating and preparing for Christmas, the birth of our Savior.  Family time is always very important for me, more so around the holidays.  Any time I can make my children happy and create great memories for them is always such a great experience!  I hope that your holidays were just as happy and memorable as ours was.  Happy Holidays!