It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Part 2

Part 2 to lots more Christmas fun!
Eating a Gingerbread House...yum:

I mentioned A Meaningful Christmas in my last post. This is my MOST favorite Christmas activity we are doing this year, and I'm so excited it will now be a tradition. My incredibly talented, creative friend and sorority sister from Baylor, Brittany Poe, (and her friend, Carrie Rogers) created this daily devotional to do with your kids every day in December leading up to Christmas. It's great because it's geared toward preschool-aged children. I feel that Ann Voskamp's Jesse Tree is awesome but some of her concepts can be slightly abstract for little ones. Caroline has learned so much about Jesus and the REAL meaning of Christmas this year. She has really grasped the concepts in A Meaningful Christmas and looks forward to her "devotional" every night (we do it at night so Matt can be included then do the daily activity the next day).

We bought her a purple tree (of course) to keep in her room and hang the ornaments on. Here she is hanging Day One's ornament...The Alpha and Omega:

So excited and proud!

I need to digress a minute...do you notice Caroline is in her pajamas in almost every picture (at least every picture taken at home)? The girl is going through a crazy obsession with pjs at the moment. If she is at home, she HAS to be wearing them. Nothing else will do. And getting her dressed to go somewhere...unfortunately that usually turns into quite the battle! I'll be honest, I'm a pj loving girl, but I do hope this phase passes quickly!
 

Matt & I have made time for a few special date nights...oh, how I need these!

We went with our community group (minus the Matthews...missed you guys!) to a tree farm for our annual tree cutting extravaganza. Unfortunately, since we aren't living in our own house at the moment, we don't get to do "our" tree this year (sad) so we went to the farm mainly to hang out with our friends :-) We went to the same farm as last year and the kiddos had fun feeding the chickens, playing on the swing set, running through the trees (very slim pickings this year), drinking hot apple cider, and riding the little train.

Wendy, Brendan, Cole, Riley, Kate, Caroline, Matthew & Matt

Matthew wasn't thrilled about the train...

...see? not too thrilled :-) Poor boy.

This one on the other hand? Pumped for the train ride!

Caroline's FIRST Preschool Christmas performance was last week. Her 3 year old class performed a few songs with the 4 year old class. They sang "I'm a Nut", "Jingle Bells", "Go Tell It On the Mountain", & "Somebody's Knocking".

Caroline sang most of her songs but wasn't too big on the hand motions. She was more interested in wiping her runny nose with her hand during most of the songs. Lovely. Really though, it was a precious performance, and I couldn't wipe the smile off my face while watching the kiddos perform.

Our last end-of-the-year Christmas performance was Caroline's ballet Parent Presentation. Another fun thing to watch! Caroline loves ballet and looks forward to it every week. Now I know exactly why!

Caroline's class with Ms Janie...about to do the Jingle Bell dance:

So serious about getting her "ballet hands" just perfect:

Caroline had to be RIGHT next to one of her besties, Lucy, the whole time:

Showing us their backbends:

We're now on Christmas break. No preschool, BSF, or ballet!  I'm trying to soak up this extra time with my kiddos, focusing on trying to teach them why this holiday is so special. It's very hard because I'm also running around like a mad woman doing last minute shopping, wrapping, planning, etc... Does anyone else feel like Christmas kind of snuck up on them this year? It's a crazy, fun, exhausting, wonderful and overwhelming time. Can't wait for next weekend!