The Most Wonderful Time of The Year

I LOVE Christmas. I'm one of those people that is sad when it's over and decor has to come down. December can be an exhausting month though, physically and mentally. Everyone tries to pack every known Christmas event into the month. I've tried the past couple years to be purposeful about the things we do. It's ok if we don't do everything the city, stores, and places have available. In fact, I think it makes us enjoy the things we do choose to do more. We aren't as rushed, if that makes sense. Of course, It's going to look like we did a ton, but remember it's spread out over a month (or more).

We always kick off the month with our city's Christmas Parade. The kids really got into it this year. They always have fireworks before it starts and Kinley LOVED them!
Just look at that face!

They always watch the parade with their cousins. :) 

We also went to a new little Christmas event here called the Festival of Lights. It was at Oak Mountain. It wasn't the best light show ever, but hey, it was their first year and it takes time to grow and improve things. 

Here are the teachers gifts for the year. They were just a hodge podge of cute stuff. 

Dylan's Class Christmas Party...

They decorated Christmas trees using ice cream cones. They also made a ton of ornaments over the month with the theme of "Christmas Around the World".  

Kinley's Class Christmas Party... 

They had yummy snacks and made the cutest ornament for the parents. They also make super cute shirts to wear for each holiday too!

KinKin loves her teachers, Ms. Tara and Ms. Cristy. She thinks they are BFFs. 

We went to the Winter Wonderland at the McWane Center. It's something else we do every year. 

It's just a fun little activity to get out of the house. They have a train that the kids like to ride. Makes me dizzy as can be though because it just goes in a big circle. I guess that's a sign I'm getting old. They also have a zipline that D likes to ride. 

Now, you know we had to see Santa! It went as well as could be expected. Kinley didn't cry!! Yay!! They both acted a little shy. She told Santa she wanted a yo-yo, that's it, just a yo-yo. Santa was like, well, I've got a ton of those! Haha! D told him he wanted army men and a new gun.

We always go through Von Maur (love that store and their piano player) to get into the mall, so we always look smack at the carousel. Kinley has to ride it or there would be a price to pay in the form of our embarrassment.  

We also decorated cookies at Big D and Nic Nic's house one night. Dylan was very precise, but Kinley just licked all the icing off her cookie and then proceeded to decorate and then lick it off again.

Jonah just chowed down immediately. Not much time for dilly dallying with these kids. 

And bless Fisher, he just ate puffs. 

I'm pretty sure I covered almost all of the activities leading up to Christmas!

As I said, Busy & Blessed!