In the Christmas Spirit

The Christmas season arrived and I could not be happier.  This is my absolute favorite time of the year, and even better, it's Justin's too!  As soon as Thanksgiving was over we started decorating for this fabulous holiday.  Justin did the outside of the house and I did the inside.

 We got this advent calendar at Kohl's this year and I LOVE it!  I filled it with treats and activities for the kids.  McKayla opens the odd days and Seth the even days.  They're going to open 25 together.

This year we got a HUGE Christmas tree.  I've always wanted a great big tree but this was the first year our ceiling would allow it.  So the four of us headed out and found a perfect 10 foot tree. 



We were a bit behind this year but we took tons of pictures for our yearly Christmas card.  Here are some of the shots from the card and a few that didn't make the cut.

We have a Christmas tradition that I'm sure you've heard of, "the Elf on the Shelf".  Every year at Christmas time he comes to visit us to keep an eye on Seth and McKayla.  Each night he flies back to the North Pole and reports everything he has seen and heard to Santa Claus.  Each morning he is in a new spot in the house.  The kids love waking up and searching the house for him.  Here he is on our tree.



We got lucky this year and Nana and Grandad (my mom and step-dad) came to visit us for a few days.  While they were here Justin and I had to go to his work Christmas party so while we were gone the kids and Nana made a gingerbread village together. 



This year we headed up to the Havana Holiday Festival.  We didn't make it in time for their Christmas parade but we still got to do some other fun activities like playing in the snow, seeing santa, and playing in the hamster ball.

Today we did somethng that ended up being alot more fun than I expected.  Downtown Tallahassee has an "ice" skating rink each year.  I say "ice" because it's not ice at all but some kind of weird plastic stuff that you can use to skate on with ice skates.  I think it was actually harder to skate on than actual ice.  We decided that if the kids liked this "ice" skating then one day soon we would make the drive to Jacksonville and go to a real ice skating rink.  Well, they loved it!

We've also done several of our other Christmas traditions this year.  We wrote letters to Santa, the kids picked out gifts for daddy, we had our Christmas camp out (all 4 of us sleeping in the living room with the Christmas lights on), and we drove around looking at Christmas lights.  We even got to see this AWESOME house in Southwood (neighborhood in Tallahassee) that won best Christmas lights in the nation on Good Morning America.  Please check out this link.  I promise you won't be disappointed.

http://youtu.be/YHwa-Iq1Bx4

Tomorrow we will have lunch at Nani and Papa C's (Justin's Granparents) house and then we will have dinner here at our house with Mimi, Papa, Meghan, Jeremy, and their dog Otis.  We'll make chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodle cookies for Santa.  I can't wait to watch the kids open their gifts from Santa. I promise not to take to long to make that post. 

November Update

November was a big exciting month for us. Justin started his new job with Regions Bank and he's really enjoying it.  He is one of their new Assistant Vice Presidents and manager of their downtown Tallahassee Branch.  I can't begin to tell you how proud of him I am.

This month also brought one of my favorite holidays, Veteran's Day.  As many of you know I have a brother, step-dad, grandfathers, an uncle, and many in-laws that all served in the military.  We also have many good friends, incuding one of our best friends, Jeremy.  He served in the USMC and was kind enough to take the day off work to attend a parade and assembly at Seth and McKayla's school in honor of  Veteran's Day.  Thanks again to Meghan and Jeremy for making this possible. 

During the week of November 6th - 11th, Justin left us to go to Chicago for the week to get a new license that would help him at work and with his future endeavors.  After a week long course, lots of studying, and a huge exam, he passed and is now a Certified Exit Planing Advisor. You may not know what that is, but it really is a BIG deal.  Have I mentioned how proud he makes me?

He got back late Friday night so to kill some time I took the kids to the downtown getdown.  For those of you not from here, it's kind of like a big pep rally the night before home FSU football games.  Luckily, Meghan and Jeremy were down there too and were very helpful with the kids.  I find big crowds kind of scary with young kids if you're out numbered.  While we were there the kids got their faces painted, got guns made from balloons, and we split a funnel cake.  Later that night we headed to the airport to pick daddy up.  They were so excited to see him and so was I!

That same weekend Seth had a flag football game.  Here's a picture of the proud parents courtesy of McKayla. ;-)

After the flag football game Justin and Seth headed to the FSU vs. Miami football game.  Seth got this special treat for getting straight A's for his first semester of Kindergarten (he's also being tested for the gifted program).  Thanks again to my cousin Anthony for the awesome seats.  They were on the 40 yard line and only 10 rows up. 

The following weekend Seth had his last flag football game for the season and had his trophy ceremony.  Here is a picture of him with his second trophy ever (first football). 

Originally, Justin and I planned to head down south to my mom's and brother's houses for Thanksgiving (the kids were with their mom).  Since Justin had just started his new job he couldn't get the time off so we stayed here instead.  We had a great thanksgiving here at our home with his parents and our friends Meghan and Jeremy.  I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too!

October Updates

I'm sad to say that it has been over a month since my last post, and since my last post was a month late, I'm really far behind.  As you may recall my last post was about Seth and McKayla's Birthday's and Birthday parties.  On the day of their birthday party (October 1st) there was another exciting event, Seth's first flag football game. 

Seth's first season of flag football went really well and it is now his favorite sport.  His team won every game except for one and we look forward to more footbal in years to come.  The season ended in November so look for an update in that post to see how it ended. ;)

In October we did our yearly tradition of going to the pumpkin patch.  Here are some pictures from that day. 

We bought one large pumpkin to carve and four or five small ones to use for our front porch decorations.

Later in the month Justin and I went to the Sugarland concert with some friends.  I have to say I've always loved Sugarland but they were very impressive in person.  I would definitely recommend seeing them to anyone who enjoys country music. 

Thanks to my cousin Anthony we were able to take the kids to the North Caroline State football game (we won).  He gave us awesome tickets on the 50 yard line.  We all had a blast cheering on the Seminoles!

October could not be complete without pumpkin carving.  After much deliberation on which pattern to use, we finally all agreed and got to work.  I think McKayla enjoyed gutting the pumpkin most and Daddy did most of the hard work of actually carving.

Sorry for the belated post but that was our October.  Be on the look out for many more updates to come in the next couple days.