Well, the turkey was carved, the kids played with cousins, and everyone had too much pie and cake. All in all, it was a pretty wonderful Thanksgiving.
So now we are on to Christmas. We got the decorations up today. We always try to do this the weekend after Thanksgiving. The kids were so much help this year! I was surprised how much they were willing and able to do, especially Elias. We would have definitely not had them finished today, if it was not for all their help. Josh and I were pretty exhausted from our 2 day trip to our family's homes.
Thankfully, my mother-in-law was more than willing to watch the kids for us yesterday as we shopped for Christmas gifts. We exchange names with my family on Thanksgiving day, so we were able to get all of those gifts taken care of in one day. We finished most of the kids gifts as well.
It feels so great to have Christmas shopping done. We are not big shoppers in general and we tend to drag our feet a little with Christmas shopping. We still have some gifts to buy, but I feel much less stressed knowing that we are mostly done. Josh and I have decided to get a new color printer/scanner/copier, in lieu of getting gifts for each other. We currently have no way to print in color, make a copy or scan pictures. This is something we have wanted for a long time, so it seems the most logical choice to get it for Christmas. I think we will also convert to smart phones. Our phones are beginning to not hold a charge and acting a little odd at times, so that also is an expense that will be under the umbrella of Christmas gifts to each other. I know I will feel better if we get things that we'll use regularly, opposed to a gift of sentiment that is not useful.
Also, while we were visiting with family, my sister gave us 2 huge bags of clothes from my nephew for Elias. Elias was really in need of some new pants and the bags had at least 8 pair of pants he can currently wear, plus pants in the next 3 sizes as well. What a huge blessing! It took me a couple hours to sort through them and have him try them on, but when I think of all the money we'll save, it was well worth it!
Last year, we really concentrated on celebrating Advent. We did a lot of activities leading up to Christmas. I felt like we truly celebrated the reason for the season last year and it was a month filled with family time and joyful celebration in our home. I definitely want to do that again this year. We used the book The ADVENTure of Christmas by Lisa Whelchel, plus I threw in a few things from Ann Voskamp as well. We will definitely do some of the things from the book again. The kids already said they want to make cinnamon-applesauce ornaments again as they were hanging ornaments on the tree tonight. They were so fun to make and the kids gave them away as gifts, which made them feel extra special, because they made them. I want the things we do to become tradition, but I also don't want them to get bored with it and lose its meaning, so I think I will try adding in other ideas too. I am going to check out the links that my friend Lorrie just put on her blog today.
I also wanted to share my friend Jill's blog post that highlights the Compassion Gift Catalog. She did such a great job breaking the catalog down and showing highlights from it. Last year, my kids looked through it and selected gifts they wanted to give in honor of their grandparents. Bella chose sanitary bathrooms for her Pappy! Nothing says love like clean bathrooms, I guess. But there really is a lot to choose from and the gifts range from very small to more substantial. It gives them an opportunity to see that there is so much more to Christmas and to life than the newest hot toy on the market.
We still need to decorate outside, so hopefully the temperature will raise a little in the next week. I tend to be the one who stays inside for tactical support when the outside decorations are going up. I hand out scissors or tape or a screwdriver as needed. I make hot chocolate for them when they return from stringing and "helping". Josh doesn't mind his little helpers, and it goes much smoother if I am not outside complaining about the cold and yapping at the kids to stop goofing around so we can just get it done already!
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