It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Yes, my house is decorated! It was decorated 2 days before Thanksgiving actually. I am pretty proud f that. I love this time of year. I love the traditions that we have adopted in our family. This year will be tight with money, but we still feel that it is important to a carry on tradition that my parents started with us when we were younger. We will give each of the kids some money and they get to go shopping for the "Toys for Tots" charity. We let them pick out whatever they want and then we drive directly to a donation center. They really get into it and it reminds them that Christmas is not all about them. Our Christmas Eve traditions will continue this year, although I have a feeling that it will not be so relaxing with little miss thing running around. We will get ready in our "warm" church clothes and head to church. I can for see Delaney running up and down the aisles (who wanted her to walk again?). After church we will head over to my parents house and eat our traditional Christmas Eve chili. We also put hot dogs in it, we have Fritos and cheese and we are good to go. After the filling meal, we all sit in our informal, designated seats and we settle in to watch White Christmas. We all have our "parts" that we play- there should be no talking otherwise. We have hot chocolate and popcorn and we watch as Bing Crosby sings "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...." and I know in the back of our minds, we are all kinda dreaming of that. The movie will end and we will go home to our own houses and wait for Christmas morning. This year will be a little different. Daylen and Kaylie won't be here in the morning, so it will just be the 3 1/2 of us. Delaney will see what Santa brings her and maybe she will understand opening presents a bit more. My family will venture over sometime in the morning to see little miss thing on Christmas and hopefully make me breakfast:) Then about 2:00 we will get the kids and they will have Christmas night with us. We are hoping to start some new traditions with them this year:) We will be focusing a lot more on family and the meaning of Christmas this year. I think it will be a lesson learned for everyone involved. After it is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year.

We had to strategically place some of the ornaments out of the reach of Delaney... that's why it looks a little beaten already.