I cannot believe it's December 8th! I guess it's time to post some Christmas pictures! We somehow managed to decorate the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It has been so much fun to see Christmas through Colton and Caden's eyes. Colton has literally asked me every day if it's Christmas yet and if Santa is coming.
I made
this when I was pregnant with Colton but this is the first year he has really understood a countdown. He loves picking a magnet off of the back each day and putting it on the next spot. (In hindsight I would make the magnets all uniform instead of varied. My favorites were some puffy stickers that have Christmas ornaments on them and I just hot glued them to magnets.)
Jack did an awesome job of putting up the Christmas lights on our house. Since our bushes kind of block the way of leaning a ladder on the front of the house, he laid on the roof and put them up.
Bunny bought us this fun book and Colton is eating it up. Every morning he remembers to look for "Elfus" and gets the biggest grin on his face when he spots his new hiding place. The elf is a direct report to Santa so it has been helpful in keeping Colton's behavior in check as long as Mommy doesn't overuse it. The other day he wanted to brush his teeth in front of Elfus so he would be sure to tell Santa :) One day in the car he was particularly tired and grumpy and I mentioned Elfus and he gruffly told me to "put Elfus back in the box and send him back to Santa. I'm all done with him!" Thankfully, we got over that and Elfus seems to be a fun, new tradition!
This is completely unrelated and out of order but Colton loves to read books and lately has really enjoyed retelling the stories he's heard. Here he is retelling the story of Jonah which he learned at his Mother's Day Out class. This was the second retelling as of course I didn't have my camera ready - but the first one needed very little prompting by me. It warms my heart!
Here's Colton after Caden thought it would be fun to close the door on Colton's hiding spot. As you can tell he did not think that was funny!
Caden is quite the instigator these days and I have to be careful not to be too quick to blame Colton for any trouble. We've had to start some short time outs for Caden much to Colton's delight. However; when they are not squabbling, they really play together quite well! Caden cannot wait for "CoCo" to wake up in the morning and if I don't stop him he will bang on the door until he is awake! They love to wrestle, chase each other, jump off the couches and laugh! Caden will mimic ANYTHING Colton does!
Mommy's reindeer.
Now he's all smiles.
Caden "helping" unwrap all the ornaments. He has broken 2 of the ball ornaments because they look like balls. What else are you supposed to do with round things but throw them on the tile floors :)
Colton oohed and ahhed over every.single.ornament then proceeded to put them all at his eye level. I left most of them because it's pretty cute :) I'll post the finished tree picture soon.
Caden helping us unpack some more decorations!
Such a fun time of the year! And BUSY! Now, I need to just take a deep breath and remember that somehow all those little to-do's on my list either get crossed off or they won't :) And Christmas will go on because there is a RISEN Savior. Lord, help me to focus on YOU and loving others instead of all the noise of the season! My heart is especially tender today towards so many sweet children who may not even have shoes or water or a family to call their own! I just finished reading
Jantzen's Gift by Pam Cope and I hope that I never forget the stories in that book. Along those same lines, my friend
Kelly shared about a ministry called
Water for Christmas. It is almost unbelievable that we can be so technologically advanced yet have entire groups of people without clean drinking water!
