Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Life has been a little different the past month or so.  Although I my two jobs still only add up to 25-30 hours a week, I don't have the time to do everything I used to and I'm still ready to go to bed around 7!  We got out our Christmas decorations the week after Thanksgiving and it really took a lot to just get motivated to put them up, let alone think about what festive things we'd do this year to celebrate.  Our advent calendar has held our Jesse tree ornaments the past few years, but the kids still have most fond memories of when I put an activity each day for them, so I took a few deep breaths and tried to plan things again this year.  Jury is still out on whether it's worth it, as -truth be told- there have been several complaints over the activities not being surprise enough or special enough.  Spoiled children don't exactly inspire the Christmas spirit in me, unless it's that daily reminder of how much we really do need Jesus!!

Anyway, we've done a couple of favorites already, like our church's meal packing event, our KNO Christmas party (turned KNO quick dinner due to snowy weather), the kids' school concert (Cindy and I both forgot our cameras), getting our tree, and celebrating St. Nicholas Day by putting our shoes out for a treat and watching the VeggieTales St. Nicholas movie.

We also tried the Hillsborough Christmas parade for the first time.  Joshua resisted, but then didn't want to leave once he saw he was getting candy.  Julia loved it too.  And even Allie got into the waving and saying "merry christmas", though she'd jump in our arms really quick if there was something loud.

Meanwhile Gray got to have the second half of his birthday trip with Nanny and Pa at Great Wolf Lodge, which he loved.

And we've done an anticipated mediocre job with the daily devotions...one here, none there, three the next time.  The kids love it though!

It's been fun to have Allie with us, experiencing these things for the first time!  She continues to light up our days with her big smile and constant laugh.  Everything is fun and exciting for her and she sure helps me laugh more!

Speaking of laughing more, my new job often has me laughing.  I wanted to share with you two extremes of kids I've had--both super fun.  The first is a 3 or 4 year old boy whose mom had to pretty much hold him down to keep him in "class", but they both cracked up so much throughout the lesson.  Hilarious.

The next is an older boy trial class I had this week.  We could have lots of conversation and I really enjoyed the change from my usual little ones.  When I brought out the picture of my family to talk about, he kept saying, "That's so cool!".  He also called Julia beautiful and I'll let you see what he said about Allie....

This next week we've got Joshua's first ultimate frisbee game.  And Joshua's 2nd ultimate frisbee game.  And Gray's first basketball game.  And Joshua's first basketball game.  Whew.  I also finish at preschool till after Christmas and we have our annual shadow play at church.  Tomorrow I have one of my favorite things this season-- handing out gifts from the kids' school's Angel Tree.  I love the organizational aspect of it, getting to work with Robyn, and seeing many of our KNO families.  We have so many wonderful traditions this time of year and I'm grateful for them.  Have a good week!