Way behind!

I know, I know. I am way behind on posts!! Not having a camera, or the time to sit and blog is killing me!! :) I have taken pics on other people's cameras and on my phone, so I do have stuff to blog, but I have been super duper busy. Not only have I been sick for 8 days now (seriously!! I'm so ready for it to go away!!) and then Alan had his surgery on friday, but I have been trying to get all my crafty presents done!! I think I have finally gotten them all done today, maybe. (There's always just *one* more present I think I can find time to make, lol). Then all of our Christmas festivities begins thursday, so it will probably be a whirlwind of activity. I am going to see if I can find time tomorrow to do at least one blog, but if not it might have to wait until after Christmas. Then I'll have like 5 blogs in a row!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week!!

Traditions

We have so many holiday tradtions, it's so much fun. I love every one of them. I hope the kids look back fondly on their childhood and carry on some of our traditions with their own families someday. :)

I love our countdown to Christmas. I made these advent cones last year for the kiddos. Each day they take down a cone and get a small treat or gift. Sometimes it's just a pack of gum or other small little yummy treat, but at least once a week they get a little bit of a bigger gift, so it's fun.

Since all 3 kids have their own set of 24 cones, it makes my house look super festive in the process! In fact I get kind of sad when we get down to the alst few days and there are only a couple cones left. I actually almost get sad when Christmas actually gets here, lol, because I love the season so much that having the day here means it's all coming to an end. :)






The boys cones go across the entryway into the dining room, one side is Bourbon's and one side is Roman's.





Starla's cones are over the window





Bourbon got a tiny Charlie Brown Christmas book and tree complete with ornament and Linus's blanket for the bottom of the tree. :)





Roman got a sock monkey complete with adoption papers and a how to take care of him kit in his first cone...





Starla got a ring pop in her first cone..





Thanks to my wonderful friend Kristal, we started a new tradition this year. We wrapped up 24 Christmas books and each night we unwrap one and read it together as a family. I own like 50 Christmas books (go figure.... :) ) so we have another basket of unwrapped ones next to the wrapped basket and we've been reading one out of each, lol. It's fun to open one though, even if they are almost all old books that we already owned, but I bout a couple of new ones....





Starla got to open the first one




Our first book was the Elf on the shelf!!! I've been wanting to get this the last couple of years but never did.



Starla named our Elf Grover. He keeps an eye on us to make sure we are being good, and each night when we go to bed he travels back to the North Pole to let Santa know how we've been, and then he appears back in our house somewhere new each day. :) Starla has been trying so very hard to be good..... :)



We are enjoying the family reading time. Starla opens one and either I or Alan reads it, then Roman opens & reads the next one, then Bourbon an then it comes back to Starla.







Starla loves getting up in the morning and scrambling to find Grover before the boys do....

he's been hiding all over the place....





Grover hid in the tree....

Amazing Christmas display

I lied, I had more pics I wanted to blog with that I took Thanksgiving weekend. When we went to Yukon for thanksgiving with my extended family we came across this house in the same neighborhood as my aunt's house. I made Alan pull over on the side of the road so I could take pics. :)

This would totally be me if I had the stuff!!! Look how cool this train is!! Each car is like made of a shed or something, with a plexiglass wall, and inside each one has a theme, like there is a barbi one, an elf one, etc.




Amazing. I want this much cool stuff to decorate some day. :)



I love that it's all just made by someone too, I don't think they went out and bought that train, they made it, and then just put stuff in each one that might not even be Christmas decorations and made it sooooo cool!




Then they just put various kids toys around it to make it more festive!!



I loved the pink barbie train car. :)






So stinkin' cool!!!!

Its beginning to look alot like Christmas....

We have lots of little Christmas critters that live under our tree during the holiday season. I always get the dated one from wal-mart every year (since 1998, when Bourbon was born!) and then sometimes some other Christmas themed stuffed animal or doll gets picked up to join in along the way.....







I love Christmas decorations!!



It just makes me so happy when it's time to decorate....



And then I can just sit and look at my tree and pretty lights and pretty decorations and just smile......




One day I hope I have enough decorations to make my whole house just look like a big Christmas mess. :)














And of course I love the decorations the kids have made through the years and continue to make....











one day I want a Christmas village. I think I have told Alan every single year for like the last 8 years or so that I want to start a Christmas village, and he could just buy my one each year as a Christmas gift so that by the time I have grandkids, I could have the whole set up. But alas, I never get one. I maybe just have to start one on my own, lol. We went to the North Pole City today, and they have this entire giant room of the store devoted to Christmas villages (and halloween and other villages as well!) and I could just stay in there for hours looking at all the tiny little masterpieces!! I just love them.

These are the last of the pics that I took before I sent my phone off to be fixed last week. It could take up to 2 weeks to get it back, I'm at such a loss without a camera!!! Sigh. So all the blogs from now on, until I get my camera back, will either have pics that other people have taken for me with their cameras (which my friend Lori did today when we went to the North Pole city!) or crummy quality pics from my phone. But at least they are pics I guess. I hope they can fix my camera!!!

Oh Christmas Tree...

I love when it's time to put up the tree! Which of course we always do the weekend after Thanksgiving. :)










We bought a Yoda tree topper on sale after Christmas last year so this was the first year we've used it. Starla looked at it and said "Why is Yoda on our tree? We have to have a star, EVERYONE has a star!" hee hee..... Which the funny thing is, is that we've always had an angel, never a star.








I love Christmas ornaments, they just make me so happy. Each one brings back some kind of memory, and I love that our personalities are reflected from the ornaments on our tree....




And I love the homemade ones from the kids over the years....




And the old ones that I had when I was a child, that my mom let me take when I moved out.



Which I tell my kids that one day when they move out, they will get to take their ornaments with them as well.




Each year I let the kids pick out a new ornament. The last several years they've done it at North Pole City, which is always fun (we actually went there today, but that will have to wait for another blog).



And they always remember which ones are theirs, and as we are unwrapping them each year to hang up they will say "oh, that's mine! I remember...." and fill in the blank of some story about when they picked it out, or what was going on that year that they bought it,or how old they were. Which just makes me smile that they too attach such fond memories to each and every ornament.



One day we might just run out of room on our tree.....

Alan's Dallas Stadium visit

I got Alan tickets to a Dallas game for his anniversary gift and he got to go a couple of weeks ago. They weren't seats, they were actually something called Party passes, and they got to visit all the places to eat and could stand anywhere that was marked for the party passes, which Alan said was cooler anyways because they went all around the stadium.

This is what he does when he is alone in a hotel room......




He met his friend Shawn from Texas there and they had a good time!


















And the Cowboys won, so what could be better than that? :)