It's Christmas Time

It's hard to believe that December is already here, but I'm so excited for all that is coming up! Today we kicked things off by going to our church Nativity that they put on every year. There's one room where you actually dress up and pose for a picture in the manger. Before we even got out of the car I told Lane I was NOT going to do that. I'm just not into cheesy things like that. But my mother in law is pretty convincing & we all ended up in costumes. Luckily I don't have that picture on my camera :) But I did get a picture of my little angel. She sure looked cute.

 Here's the actual back drop for the picture.

 I originally had not planned on putting up a tree downstairs since my parents would have one upstairs, but then my mom said I should and that got me thinking. And the next thing you know I'm at a Black Friday sale buying a 7.5 foot tree. The funny thing is that when we got home I decided to measure the ceiling height & it's only 7 foot 3 inches! Oh well, we'll just store it for when we have a house. So then I decided that we would buy a small real tree (I just love the smell). But Lane's dad had a 6' artificial tree that had never been opened, so we decided to save some money this year & use it. In the future, I do plan on buying a smaller real tree for the kids in addition to the larger artificial family tree. On their tree I want to keep the decorations simple- snowflakes, burlap & picture frame ornaments. This will be my sentimental tree. Each year I'll add a picture of them. I've already gotten a kick out of looking at how much they have changed each Christmas.  Elliot helped decorate the tree, but after about 5 snowflakes she asked me to finish up because she was too tired...lol!

 Here's a picture of each kid on their 1st Christmas.