Christmas so far...

Arden has soooo many cute Christmas outfits this year, thanks mostly to my mom's clearance finds at Dillard's last year. This lime polka dot confection, rimmed with fur, is one of my very favorites.

I wrapped 24 Christmas books before December started, and the kids have been opening one a night. Clarke's reading them "Fancy Nancy's Splendiferous Christmas" in this picture. After they read it, Arden went around saying, "Ooh Laa Laa" for days. I could just eat the kids up in their matching Gingerbread jammies.

We opened our new Little People nativity on December 1st and read the Christmas story. Arden calls Baby Jesus, "MY Baby Jesus." Huston's not that interested in it.

Huston did, however, LOVE helping me decorate the tree this year. He really helped me hang up a lot of the ornaments and was so excited about the whole process.

My friend Ashlee and I organized an advent devotional ornament exchange this year, which I might post about later if I have time. We got 24 girls together and everyone was assigned a day of the devotional - I had creation. Then we each made 24 copies of our ornament and had a little party where we distributed the ornaments so now we have one to go with each day of the devotional.

We have really enjoyed doing our advent devotional every night and hanging the ornament on the tree. The topics are simple, but good, and I hope it's preparing our kid's hearts for Christmas this year.

This Saturday Truitt and Melinda took the kids downtown to see the Christmas tree and lights. They had such a good time and came back talking about everything.

This sweet little outfit is from Melinda. So precious!

And Huston made his Rudolph shirt in school (and then threw a huge fit about wearing it and swore he was never going to wear it again).

I made the kids take another picture before church on Sunday because I thought their outfits were so cute. Huston was not amused.