Christmas, Christmas Time is Here. . .

Behind on posts as usual. :)

We do love Christmas around here. We always have our tree up the day after Thanksgiving, but with Thanksgiving late this year, it was up the weekend before Thanksgiving. The girls had a blast decorating the tree and putting up other decorations around.

Hooray for the Christmas tree!

Notice all of the ornaments in one place on the front.

Ornaments!

This is fun!

We also worked on clearing out the toy room. Boy, was that fun. It needs to be cleared out even more. We ended up with 5 large gallon trash bags full plus a few other items that don't fit in bags. We passed those goodies on to the Shelter Store in Belleville in case you are looking for a good place to take some stuff that can help out someone. The shelter store proceeds support a women's violence prevention shelter.

Here are some of the goodies!

Then, it is on to Christmas parties and our second annual trip to Branson (without children!). We had a great time and got almost all of our Christmas shopping finished. Once again, I didn't really get any good pictures, but here is TJ enjoying a fancy massaging recliner at the Brookstone store.

It is definitely NOT in our budget.

Our most recent Christmas party was a family reunion/Christmas party for my father-in-law's side of the family. We get to travel a few hours south in Missouri over the roller coaster roads. Well, this was Jaylyn's first year to puke on those roads and I was not prepared. It is definitely a crazy road and she just couldn't hold it in any longer. She was so happy that she didn't get anything on her new Christmas tree shirt. I don't know how she did that. Of course, we are in a town in the middle of no where, so the Dollar General was all we had and they didn't have pants for her. So, thankfully a cousin loaned us a pair and we continued to the party. It is always a nice lunch together with cookie exchange, ornament exchange and Christmas card exchange. I love starting December out with all of those cards right away to enjoy. Jaylyn was just fine on the way home thankfully! I will definitely be ready next time. :)

Here are Jaylyn and Adley opening their present at the party. Once again, I didn't do well with pictures.

So, lots going on and more posts to come. Hope you are enjoying the Christmas season. Remember to focus on the reason for the season - the birth of our Savior!