Holiday Traditions

Happy Thanksgiving! I know it's a few days late but better late than never. We had a great Thanksgiving. My brother, his wife and their 3 boys came and stayed with us and we had such a good time. It's always so much fun to see them and our kids have so much fun together.


We started the day off by getting the food started and then my favorite part, or at least one of them, looked through the ad's to find our places to conquer the next day. Unfortunately the ad's weren't super great this year and due to the trampling incidences around the country I don't think they'll get much better from this point on. But my SIL and I found some places to go and things that we knew our kids would love so we planned ahead. We ate our dinner, had pie, as seen by my Porter man, he loves chocolate pie, and enjoyed the rest of our day together. The next morning Jami and I headed out to stand in a Toys R Us line for over an hour :( but we did get what we wanted. We headed around to some other stores and found everything we had on our lists. I recieved a phone call from Brandon after our 4th store telling me that I had to come home now, the boys were going a little too crazy for him I guess. So we called it quits and finished the rest of our shpping online once we got home.

After we got home and got some lunch we took the kids over to the mall to ride the train and to see Santa. The train people weren't the happiest people to be around, but once we finally got on the train the boys had a blast. Aren't they all so cute.

Logan told santa that he wanted a light saber this year, I think that one will be do-able since his cousin got him that for christmas. Yes it's a good thing that he can't read or else I'd be spoiling all of his fun.

I didn't hear what Porter told santa but when I asked him what he had said he told me that he wanted a "hippopotamus". I think daddy has been singing that song a little too much this year. He's starting to influence our kids wants for Christmas.

We went against all the rules and set up our christmas tree last saturday. It was so much fun to be able to have our own big tree this year and to put all of our favorite ornaments on them. The boys got a kick out of looking at their ornaments from the years past. We have a tradition of giving each of the kids their own ornaments every year. They loved seeing what they had when they were babies and stuff.

Here's all the happy boys with the finished product. Logan turned off the light and we all just sat and stared at it and talked about how magical a tree can be. I don't really know what it is, but with the lights turned on some kind of magic seems to happen, I love it.

I couldn't find ornaments that I liked this year or what I really wanted to represent this year for each boy, so I took them to Kmart and let them pick. We found some good ones. Porter wanted this cute little car which I thought represented us living here in Michigan pretty well.

Logan picked a bicycle since this is the year he got his first big boy bike and can ride it, with training wheels all by himself.

I love this time of year. I know we should always try to carry Christmas in our hearts all the time, but there's something about this time of year that is just magical to me. I love it. It makes me more grateful for the blessings that I have in my life and gives me a greater desire to go out of my comfort zone and to help those around me in need. It's the most Wonderful Time of the Year.