Holidays 2008-FINALLY!!

Okay, this is for journaling purposes only! You can have your blog turned into a book and WaLa! Family Journal. I remember right after Halloween all the stores starting hauling out all the Christmas goodies. Everyone was saying it was too early...blah..blah..blah. I was excited, because I thought awesome now maybe I can actually get everything done that I want to. Christmas pictures, sending cards, baking goodies, starting new traditions, hanging lights, decorating, etc. etc. etc. I am not sure why we try to squeeze all that into one month anyway. So I honestly tried to utilize time, shop early, plan, organize-all that. If we had time to do something like drink some hot chocolate and build a fire in the fire pit we did it. But guess what about two weeks before Christmas I had not gotten our pictures taken-I had all the clothes(which is the hardest part) which means I had not sent Christmas cards, I had no ornaments on my tree-I do have a 1 yr. old, I had only baked half the stuff I wanted to, etc. etc. etc. WHERE DID THE TIME GO??? I pulled together what I could and then anxiously waited for it to be OVER! The same as every other year. Maybe next year the stores will start in September?! These are some of our Holiday season festivities

This year our stake held a live Nativity program. It was really cold the night we went. This is a horrible picture, but you get the idea. It was a nice reminder of the true "reason for the season."

We took along our friends and neighbors, Casey and Joshua, they also went to a Primary activity right before this where they watched a Christmas movie, made some ornaments, and ate red and green popcorn balls.

We made the trek to the Temple to see the Christmas lights. Tate is taking this picture. Addison and Jace enjoyed the lights. Jace spent the rest of the month pointing and saying "look" everytime he saw some lights. Afterwards we hit Dairy Queen for some ice cream and then went to Chik-fil-a for some fries. Every family outing MUST include junk food for it to be a success. This was our trip to the mall to see Santa. Jace HATES to ride in a stroller. He wants to be out running around and trying to get as far away as possible from where he is supposed to be. So I thought maybe if we rented one of these strollers he might not scream the whole time. Of course Addison insisted upon not being left out of the fun. They did have fun driving and playing bumper cars, while we waited in line for Santa. Addison was very excited for Christmas this year. She understood a little and loved to see all the pretty decorations. It was fun to have a little one who just enjoyed the spirit of things rather than just worrying about how much she was going to get. We had some fun times and hopefully made a few memories along the way.