Deck The Halls

The Christmas season has been so fun this year!! It's been awesome to start our own new traditions since we're staying here this time, and Madison is SOOOO excited!! We started the month with an FHE lesson about the nativity and the reason we have Christmas, which Madison really seemed to get. We've kept talking about it throughout the month, and now whenever she sees a nativity, she says "Remember what we talked about, about baby Jesus?" We've also tried very hard to make the season about giving, not just getting. This was tough for Madison at first but we've just talked a lot about how happy Jesus and Heavenly Father are when we help make other people happy. She helped pick out and wrap our Angel Tree gift, she helped us deliver several boxes of gifts and food for some people in our ward and she helped us put together our neighbor gifts. We've also had a ton of fun doing the 12 Days of Christmas for two families in our ward. We go every night to take that night's present to them (don't worry - they don't read this blog :) ) and Jordan and I take turns with Madison delivering them. She loves sneaking up to the door, and then she thinks it's great fun when we ring the doorbell and then scoop her up and take off running!

Our Sundays are pretty hectic so I have yet to get a picture of the two girls in their matching Christmas dresses, but I'm determined to get it done this Sunday! They look adorable! We miss our families all the time, but I think we definitely made the right decision to stay here this year and start our own family Christmas traditions. And we're very happy that Grandpa is coming to visit the day after Christmas! What's Christmas without being completely spoiled by Grandpa?! Jordan is done with school now too until Jan. 7 so life really couldn't be better!!

Here's a little glimpse of how we've decked our halls :)

Our dining table. My Grandma gave us a really nice set of Christmas dishes that I've been using whenever I get a chance!

Our advent calendar. This has been one of my favorite new traditions. Each roll has a piece of tissue paper with a little candy for each of us (Reese's or Kisses) and a scripture about the Savior. Every night, Madison gets to pull the tissue paper out of the next roll before we go into her room for bedtime. Then we read a new Christmas book (I checked out one for each night of the month from the library!), eat our candy and read our scripture. Madison is always so excited to get her candy and it's a nice way to end the day. We've always done a book and a scripture, but this has seemed to bring more meaning to it.

We have a mantel!!! I love our nativity sets up there and our four stockings!! The middle nativity set is from Jordan's mission to Australia. It has a lot of different animals and is really cool.

Stockings! Since we don't know how many children we're doing to have and I'd like them to all have matching stockings, for now we just buy the cheap ones and use glitter pens and Christmas scrapbook embellishments to decorate them!

A little reminder of family. My Grandma gave me the blocks on the left when we visited for Thanksgiving and Jordan's Mom helped me make the Joyful Countdown blocks a couple years ago.

Another fun tradition - I made this tree out of green felt and made a bunch of felt ornaments to go along with it. It was supposed to help Madison spend more time decorating her tree and less time redecorating mine. If you know Madison at all, you know it hasn't worked that way, but she has fun with this one too!

Modeling her Christmas tutu. This girl always has a tutu on, so I made her a new one for Christmas.

My friend Kelsie showed me how to embellish the girls' handprints on ornaments. I love how they turned out!!!

This is the only present we have under the tree, and it has only survived because Madison helped me wrap it so she knows that it's a present to Daddy from her and is thus not interested in tearing it open. She decided to use her Mickey Mouse stickers to add a little personal touch :)

I got this little 4 ft purple tree on clearance after Christmas last year and we decided to put it in Madison's room in place of her nightlight. I got little foam ball ornaments for it too. Madison LOVES this tree! This is how we find her pretty much every night after she's supposed to be in bed.

Nativity magnets. I also made a set on popsicle sticks that we've used for our FHE lessons.

What's left of our second pan of fudge :) Don't worry - we haven't eaten it all! I used the first pan at a cookie exchange I hosted with my friend Lauren and I actually made this pan to put in our neighbor gifts. Although, I definitely could eat two pans by myself - I love this stuff!!!

House = Outside Christmas Lights. Jordan wasn't too keen on this idea (he's always said the only way we'll have outside lights is if we have enough money to hire a boy scout to put them up for us). But I am my mother's daughter so one afternoon while the girls were taking naps and he was at school, I put them up by myself!!!

Anyone who mentions the unlit section will get the look of death - I may have forgotten to test them before hanging them ;)

Going up our front walk

Our BEAUTIFUL wreath!! I can't thank Jordan's mom enough for this thing - I LOVE IT!

Ella the Elf! My Mom got this for us this year, and Madison has loved it! She gets up every morning and wanders around looking for Ella and then giggles uncontrollably when she finds her. She says goodbye to Ella every time we leave the house and often talks to Ella throughout the day. She's going to miss Ella a lot when Christmas is over.

Our new Christmas tree!!!!!!

We used my birthday money from my Grandma Bobbie to buy this baby a couple months ago, and I'm SOOOOOOO happy we did! Our old tree was getting pretty tiny for a family of four, and this one is big and full and beautiful!! We'll definitely use it a long time! It's 7.5 feet tall and unlit, so it took an entire Saturday morning to put up but it was worth every minute! Jordan did a fantastic job with it! Funny story, though ... I bought five boxes of 100 count lights for it a few days before we put it up, thinking that would be enough, WRONG. We ended up going back to the store THREE times while setting it up to buy more lights. There are actually 11 strands and 1200 lights on it!! It's perfect - it's the first thing I turn on every morning and the last thing I turn off every night!