It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Poor Duncan was running a fever.

 Now that Thanksgiving is over it's time to prepare for Christmas! We have a tradition in our family of buying each child a  new Christmas ornament each year. That way we have memories of their likes and interests each year while they are growing up and they have a good start for their own trees when they move out. We give each child their own box to store the ornaments in out of season (which also helps us remember whose is whose). The kids love to go through their ornaments each year when they put them on the tree. We also buy a dated family ornament each year. The kids get to put their own birth years on the tree and Rod and I place the rest of them. This year was funny, as I was unwrapping the year ornaments, Morgan  kept asking who was born that year for each ornament. I had to explain that we don't have quite that many children. We've only had two children born in consecutive years and some of the kids have three year spacing.

The kids' bins

  This ornament is from my Grandparent's tree. I always put it on our tree when I was growing up and I took it with me when I moved out. Unfortunately the other one broke, so I'm extremely careful with this one!

  Back when Cameron was a baby, I made embroidered crazy quilt Christmas stockings for everyone. I had a lot of leftover fabric, so I've been able to make matching ones for the younger kids too. Hopefully Brenna's will be finished by Christmas eve this year, for now she gets to use the "baby girl" generic stocking.

 We also put up our Advent calendars. I bought the tree one when Rod and I were first married. We put it up every year until we moved here four years ago. Somehow it got lost in the move and we couldn't find it ANYWHERE! This year I was looking for something else and opened EVERY box in the garage and dug all the way to the bottom. I finally found this in the bottom of a box of old Christmas lights that we haven't used since we moved, so it is finally in use again. The other Advent calendar Rod's parents got us a few years ago. It has little houses with boxes that need to be filled. I didn't think ahead enough to have stuffers on hand, so we filled it with leftover Halloween candy. Does that make me a horrible mom or a really smart one? I can't decide, but the kids seem fine with it.

 The stockings behind the Advent houses were made by Rod's grandma Virginia. She, unfortunately, passed away just after Morgan was born ( the day after Morgan was born, but that's a whole different story remind me to tell it some time), so only the four older kids have the huge knit stockings. We don't actually fill those, we just use them for decoration. I keep thinking I'll figure out a pattern for them and make some for the younger kids, but it hasn't happened yet. They are such a wonderful reminder of Rod's Grandma for us.
 I still haven't put up my nativity set. I prefer to do that while the little kids are asleep since it is breakable and everyone always wants to "help". We let the kids stay up late for a movie marathon so I might not get that put up for a few days. then we'll be all decorated!