It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Actually, it's looked like Christmas for a while here (the day after Thanksgiving everything switches over...no matter how tired I might be!). I'm just finally getting around to writing about it...

The Christmas Penguin I gave to our usual "Guard Penguin" for company during the Holiday Season...the one that Allie keeps trying to drag into her crib (right)...yesterday it was on the floor after naptime...

My Christmas gifts...

For the twins' First Christmas I wanted everything to be PERFECT. I wanted the entire house to be a Winter Wonderland. I wanted to make their stockings - beautiful, original ones rather than generic. I wanted to play Christmas music non-stop. After a few days of the decoration boxes hanging around (with hopes that they would inspire me with some magically perfect arrangment of everything) I got sick of the clutter and ordered them downstairs (and threw whatever didn't have a place somewhere - it was good enough). After not being able to find my perfect stocking pattern (it's somewhere...) or a similar pattern online, and running out of time (literally...I have no time!) - I bought generic ones at Target. And the Christmas music has been playing...sporadically...but I've listened to no where near my usualy quota.

Just a few of the snowmen (and women) in our house...

However, the tree is up with some of our favorite ornaments (it's small...so we have to be choosy about what goes on) - our Angel Bell with a quote from It's a Wonderful Life, a Nativity ball given to us for our first Christmas, the disco ball Lucas got on our trip to Martha's Vineyard (I know...a disco ball? Of all the ornaments...but that's what he wanted...and now we're pretty attached!), our Huskers and Michigan snowmen (gotta represent!), a ball that was hand-painted by Lucas' Grandma, a replica of The Elms - one of the Mansions we visited in Newport, RI last year with our families, and the star - which was given to me by my dear friend Kelsey. There are more on the tree (but did you really want a picture of EVERY one?), and if you gave us an ornament that you don't see, never fear! I find all sorts of fun places to put our other ornaments!

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care (we had to find additional stocking holders since J-O-Y wasn't big enough!), the Nativity is in it's place (actually, I have 5...including two little ones that are carved out of a single piece of wood, and my personal favorite with the Nativity scene in God's Hands...which I like to keep up all year), the snowman are out in all their abundance. It may not be perfection, but it's enough of a Winter Wonderland to make me happy :)

And as for music, every night we listen to Baby Einstein's Holiday Lullabies, and during playtime we often rock out to the Chipmunks Christmas cd and a special mix with fun Christmas songs like Dominic the Donkey and I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas! I also have pulled out all of our cds and have played the Hillsdale Choir Christmas cd "Sing Noel" - which I helped make (as an alto in the choir)!!

We're working on our holiday traditions. One of them is handed down from my childhood. My mother gave me the Christmas Countdown calendar that we had growing up. When I was young my brothers and I would fight over who got to move the mouse each day - prompting a rotation set up at the beginning of the month. Now we move the mouse each day with Allie and Ryan (no official rotation, but daddy does a good job of keeping it even).

I sometimes hate the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas because I want so badly to relish every second, but they fly by so quickly. But I love, LOVE the Christmas season, and ultimately remembering the Little Baby whose birth brought the Greatest Gift.