Christmas-y Stuff!

As we look forward to celebrating Christ's birth, here are a few more things we've been up to!

Cookies and Caroling 

We finished up our baking with lots of great helpers :)  

We made up cookie plates for the neighbors

And went caroling to deliver our cookies!

Gift Making

The kids painted and assembled special birdhouses for the grandparents

And made ornaments for the Aunts and Uncles

Mr. Ken's Christmas "Museum"

Each year our neighbor Mr. Ken spends many days setting up his house for Christmas, and he allows us to come over and see his "museum" (as the kids call it!)  This year he also gave the kids candy cane headbands!

I love watching the kids eyes take it all in!

Mr. Ken has many old windup toys displayed

It's fun to discover what each toy does!

The favorite this year was the jack-in-the-box!

Many winter scenes, trains, and santa's abound

And the unique music boxes are many and awesome!

This year Mr. Ken added an ornament to his tree with all three kids names on it!

 Dates

Kristin and Eric invited us to go to the wild game with them!

This year, in leu of gifts for each other, Paul and I did a Christmas date!  We went out to Bucca de Beppos...

and went to see the comedy show Triple Espresso!

Paul and I were supposed to go see Annie at the Ordway with my family on the 21st and Grandma who was in town, but poor Paul had the stomach flu :(  I took my friend Jessi as my date (she took this picture).

In fact, the Christmas celebrations that followed this picture have all continued to be tainted by the stomach flu...which is going through our family.  ICK!  As I write this, our family is supposed to be in Chicago celebrating with my mom's extended family, which we have done every year since I can remember (aside from one other year when sickness also kept us away).  Nevertheless, we have enjoyed keeping Christmas simple this year.  We have not been able to do all of the traditions we do every year, but we HAVE gotten lots of family cuddles and HAVE been able to slow down and remember the reason we celebrate...Jesus came down to earth!