Our weekend plus some

A lot can change in less than a year--Aleah and Lundyn

Cade had a WHOLE FOUR days OFF from work this last week because of Thanksgiving. Unheard of. Well....actually it's not, and we hope to not have many four days off in a row actually, so let me not jinx ourselves. But in the past little while he hasn't had very many weekends off. So this was nice. But yeah, let's not hope for another four days off for awhile. :) Work is good.
While Cade was off we had some friends over. Taucia and her husband and daughter came out to see our new house as well as our friend Stacie. It was a short visit but it was good still. It's good to have friends that even when you don't see each other often enough nothing changes with your friendship. These ladies will always be some of my best friends.

And let the Christmas festivities begin....
Cade put Christmas lights up for his first time--on our first house!
I was one proud wife. Good work, babe!!

We started our Advent Calendars...The activity calendar was gifted to us last year from Cade's brothers family. We took a look, changed up some things, kept some things and started it again. I love it. GREAT gift idea.
Day 1--
"The memories we have make us rich. So bake up some cookies and then ding-dong-ditch"

Day 2--
"Now here’s an idea for FHE, take and post a snapshot of your cute family---In front of the CHRISTMAS TREE!" (I added the last part this year...if you couldn't tell)

 My family's tradition growing up was always to have sprite and egg nog (mixed, anyone else do this?) on Christmas Eve. One day when Cade and I were going to put up our Christmas tree Cade bought egg nog and sprite and messed up my whole tradition. And we went with it. Now whenever we put up our tree we have our egg nog (and sprite). Our tradition.

Birthdays and Christmas is so much more fun with kids. A little bit of that Christmas magic that left when you found out Santa didn't really exist comes back when you have kids and get to play Santa. I'm loving it. I'm sad that Christmas isn't longer.

I came by this little post about making Christ the center of your Christmas. I thought it was good and I think I'm going to print it off and read it every year when I pull out my Christmas stuff. I didn't agree with EVERYTHING.. But some good points were made and I'd like to remember some things. My personal opinion, I don't think it's wrong to let the kids believe in Santa and enjoy Christmas day playing with what he got them. I think most of the season is dedicated to the birth of Jesus and spreading good around us that Santa will always come second. I'm not too worried. A couple ways that we are making Christ the center in our Christmas celebration is...

--This Advent calendar we got from Cade's parents on Thanksgiving. But I thought I could do a little more with it when I found this scripture Christmas tree page. I took the scriptures in the order they are on this tree and tucked them into the advent calendar in the same order. So every night we put up the piece and then read a scripture.


&


--I wanted to start a tradition of letting our kids open one gift on Christmas Eve- that gift being something that centered around or reminded our children of the Savior. So this year we bought a fisher price nativity set/toy. I'm pretty excited about it.

So, I don't feel guilty about my children listening to Christmas music or watching movies about Santa Clause because he'll never be the most important part in our house. But he's kind of a fun piece to the whole Christmas thing.

I LOVE this holiday.