Its Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Yesterday we spent the day putting our Christmas decorations up around our home. Our ritual normally is, the day after Thanksgiving we wake up, I make a big breakfast, turn on Christmas music and we spend the day trimming the tree and putting up our Christmas decorations. Since we will be out of town this year for Thanksgiving, we decided to put them all up yesterday. The kids were thrilled! Putting up Christmas decorations has to be one of my favorite things to do. The kids were so happy to trim the tree....except Maya. She didnt even want to touch the bulbs! She was happy to lay on the floor and snuggle with George, and that was fine by me!

The most entertaining part of the evening was when Zac started playing "drums" on the Christmas cookie tins. Of course Kelsey took that opportunity to show off her dance skills! It was so cute to watch them put on their "Show!".

We have a large plant shelf above the front door of our house. Adam thought that would be a great place to have a tree. I agreed, as long as I didnt have to climb all the way up there and trim it!! We were lucky enough to have some of my mom's Christmas ornaments from her NJ house that she had given to us earlier this month. We decided to use them for the plant shelf tree, and it made it soooo beautiful! My mother's house in NJ during Christmas is such a feast for the eyes. She has several trees all trimmed beautifully, a full Dicken's Village assembled ontop of her grand piano (and Adam taught her a few years ago how to add snowy mountains to the village so then it got REALLY huge!) and gorgeous Christmas decor everywhere you look. I have such fond memories of Christmas with my family in NJ. So it was really neat to have some of her ornaments for a tree at my house! Thanks Mom!!!!

Throughout our home we have tiny Christmas trees. This year I thought it would be fun to decorate one of them with the decorations my sisters and I made for my mom when we were in 1rst grade. My mom has saved some of the cutest Christmas decorations that my sisters and I made for her in elementary school. She still has a macoroni noodle christmas tree I made for her in preschool!!! If I do say so myself, its a really good noodle tree! Anyway she gave me the 1rst grade ornaments and I was proud to show them off!

Since it is Thanksgiving week I am going to take a moment to say what I am thankful for. I am thankful that I have a lot to be thankful for!! I am thankful for my amazing husband. He has an uncanny ability to find the good in any situation. He is a great dad and my kids and I are so lucky he is in our life. Best of all he is my best friend! He is so much fun to be around and hang out with. I am thankful for my children. Though challenging it is to be a stay at home mom, the rewards are better than anything else in the world. I am thankful for my health and the health of my family. I am thankful for my incredible sisters. They are smart, beautiful and kind. I am so lucky to have them in my life! I am thankful for my AMAZING parents. They are unbelievably wonderful grandparents and my girls love them soooo much. I am thankful for my friends. Each and everyone of them has impacted my life in so many wonderful ways. I am thankful for my in-laws! It is wonderful to truely love your husbands family like you love your own! And finally I am thankful for blogging. It has enabled me to look at life in a different light and capture moments I would have never thought to capture. This has been quite a challenging, chaotic, crazy year, but in the end I still have my beatiful kids and rockstar husband (lol) so I am happy!!