Santa and Snow....

Oh we had such a wonderful night!  I love seeing Santa and the Christmas lights!  Traditions are so fun and sitting with Santa is a big one for our family.  I have an album that I keep out for the holidays of all the past years we have seen Santa.  It is so great because I just put one picture in a year and I'm all caught up.  YEAH!! I am a consultant for Once Upon A Family.  This company has really helped me to focus on the important things that we do with our family, like traditions.  (Plus I got to go to Jamaica for free!)  OUAF has simple tools to help make those traditions achievable in our crazy lives.   Tonight we filled our book with the 2008 Santa picture.  We just made the cut off for the end of the line. WHOOSH!  Santa was terrific.  He spent at least 25 minutes with my kids going over their past behavior for the year and what each one wanted for Christmas.  We got wonderful pictures to capture the moment so my Dori brain will always be available to get a visual.  We also caught pretend snow (bubbles) in the Santa area.  Princess P. loved the "snow"!  You can tell by her face that she was in pure kid heaven.  Another tradition that we do during this time is to visit a very special neighborhood that has lights galore and also a backyard walk through of the story of the birth of Christ.  This year one of our friends let us take a family picture on the rocking horse.  So I have warm fuzzies thinking about our night and I'm sure the kids will be dreaming of sugar plums dancing in their dreams.

My new garland....

So I'm new to the Nesting Place but have already felt inspired to do something unusual for me!     DeCoRaTe!    Yikes that word just scares me when I think I might have to try and create something.  But I guess I lurked on enough blogs that it got me thinking if everyone else says they can't do much with garland (which I beg to differ) than surely I can do a little something.  These women have totally transformed their garland pieces!  So I'm going to show you my before (well not really I had to dust before I took the picture LOL) and then my after.  I don't have a fireplace but the kids and I are thinking of building a fake one so we can have a place to hang our beautiful stockings that my dear sweet mother has made for all of my children.  So here goes.....

Love my tree.

I love our Christmas tree. This year it is even better because the kids did so much of the work. I didn't even have to pull it out of the box. (Tree was a super deal from a neighbors garage sale for $5.00, pre-lit and super easy to put up! Yeah garage sales!) I love to look at the tree all lit up and remember all the ornaments and where they came to find a home on our tree. I think it will be hard to give up those sweet homemade ornaments my children have made through the years! Just getting up in the morning when its still dark and turning on the lights of the tree and thinking about why we even celebrate Christmas is such a blessing.  My hope is for everyone to take a little time out of this busy holiday and enjoy a moment each day where you can reflect on the reason for the season.