The Winters' World: Christmas preparation and Eve 2014

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Christmas preparation and Eve 2014

We always set up the Christmas tree the Sunday night after Thanksgiving
My big helpers cheesing it up for the camera:

All three cheesing! LOVE!!

My greatest gifts in life, them and their Daddy!

At the beginning of December, E hadn't quite learned to crawl yet. Thank goodness!

We LOVE footed pajamas around here!

We had two Christmas programs, the one at the kid's school (only 3 years and up perform))

And the one at our church!

Elise was a proud supporter and attendee of both :-)

Our church puts on an awesome Breakfast with Santa event!

And they have professional photos with Santa available! unfortunately, Blake was having a "2 moment," as we call them. Two outta three ain't, bad, right?

And, he's back!

So we went to Cabela's, where we had better luck with Santa for Blake...only problem was, his suit made Sissy want to sneeze, haha! There's always next year :-)

We do an Advent Calendar, and our activities are chock full of crafts, some service projects, and fun Christmas-themed activities. Making our Reindeer fingerprint cards!

Our upstairs tree (it is only 4 ft) holds all of the kids' ornaments they've made. It's my favorite tree! And our calendar sits right by it. Jameston and Blake loved waking up each morning to find our elf on the shelf, but what they loved more was finding out the day's activity

Heart melt

What's becoming a tradition is taking our letters to Santa to the Galleria, where Macy's donates money for every stamped envelope. And we all love seeing the world's tallest indoor tree!

More crafting!

And wrapping!

Brett had to work Christmas Eve morning, so the kids and I enjoyed a North Pole breakfast with our Elf before he had to leave (complete with powdered donuts, green (spinach) smoothies, and bananas :-)