Christmas Activities

I am definitely getting into the Christmas spirit!! I found a Christmas music radio station and have been playing it when I am in the car. Anthony can't stand it :) He absolutely hates old timey crooning type of music. He thinks it is ear torture. So, I usually just play it when it is me and James in the car and I instantly start thinking of Christmas. Holidays are so much more fun now that we have a kid. It is like you get to relive the holidays through a child's eyes and reexperience the magic. Usually Christmas is pretty ho-hum for us, but this year it is so much more exciting because we've been planning out what traditions we want to start for James.

Things we are starting this year:

• Presents of Christmas pajamas that we open on Christmas eve. Ours are gators of course!
• Picking out a new Christmas ornament every year that represents something about the past year and a new ornament for James. I got this idea from my friend Leah, she gets each of her kids an ornament each year that is theirs to put up on the tree and then when they move away from home they get to take all of their ornaments with them. Cool right! We are going to Hallmark tomorrow for family home evening to pick them out
• Having a letter in each person's stocking from Santa telling them how they were good that year. Anthony and I will write letters to each other, and I can't wait for my stocking to see what he writes!

Here are our Christmas decorations with all of our presents under the tree. (I am all finished with my Christmas shopping, horray!)

You got to love pinterest, it gave me an idea for decorating our front room with snowflakes and Leah gave me the idea for the snow.

I've been looking for Christmas events for us to go to around here and last night we tried to go to a live nativity. I heard that it was really good and was looking forward to it. I thought it was going to be something where you just walked through, see some animals and the nativity scene and be done in 10 minutes. Aparantly it was much more involved than that, and as a result there was a long wait. We waiting in line outside for 45 minutes to an hour, thinking that it was the line for the nativity. Wrong. Once we got to the front we found out it was the line to get tickets to go in at least an hour and half later! By that time it was past James' bedtime and he was getting fussy, so we decided to go home. It wasn't a total waste though. We got to see a donkey, a lamb, a roman soldier on a horse, and a camel while we were waiting in line!

Here is James and me with the camel. We couldn't get James to look at the camera because he wanted to see the camel! He loves animals so much, it is so cute to see :)

Next week is our ward christmas party and the entire family is dressing up like Who's from Whoville. Stay tuned for pictures!!