December...

I can't believe that it is already December! And not only that, but that it is the FIFTH of December! Yikes! That means the month is already 1/6 of the way over! It is also the Christmas Season. Radio Stations are playing Christmas Music ALL the time, and it is fun to listen to it! Christmas lights are going up everywhere, and the stores are full of everything Christmas!

I guess I should let you know that we survived Thanksgiving! We went up and stayed with my grandparents, and then had Thanksgiving dinner with Sam's family. And can you believe that their turkey was done at 9:00 IN THE MORNING?! Needless to say, despite us trying to convince them to cook it later, they didn't and we had cold turkey for dinner! But the company was good, and so that is what counts! Melanie made some of the BEST pumpkin pie ever! (sorry...my mom's still tops it) And luckily we got to go back up to my grandparents and have some of that pumpkin pie also! Yummy! So that was our Thanksgiving. Thank you to EVERYONE who made it fun for us!

I am very excited for this month! First off, Aaron and Mell left on their Cruise today. (Of which I am INSANELY jealous of, but oh well :-)) And will be gone for the next week. The week after that, we have my brother's birthday, and we have a visitor to come and join us! That is right, Crystal is going to make the trip from Oregon to spend a few days with us! We are excited that she will be able to participate in some of our Christmas traditions with us! This is also the first year that we have someone other than the two of us! We are almost all done with our Christmas shopping (yay!!) and are excited to show Bubba everything that we enjoy! Sometime towards the middle of the month Chris gets to come home for a short time! Yay!! So that will be exciting. Then there is Christmas, of which we will be spending at my parents house this year. We are going to do the whole shabang with my family and I can not tell you how EXCITED I am for that! Then the next week is New Year's of which we haven't decided what to do yet.

Also in that time, I have a couple of groups to meet up with! My very good friend Michelle will be coming up for a visit from Texas, and we are going to try to get together! I will get to see her little baby! (Who apparently isn't as little as I think he is!) And another group of ladies who are close to my heart are meeting also in that time. Not to mention I have Bubba's 9 month appointment this month, and I have to finish getting Christmas gifts for everyone else! Yikes! Busy month!

But I thought that I would make a post about some of my FAVORITE things from Christmas:

• I love staying with my family and going out and looking at the lights, reading the Christmas story, and singing Christmas songs, on Christmas Eve.
• There is always an elf that finds his way to our house on Christmas Eve and that is the 1 present we can open on Christmas Eve.
• Waking up early in the morning, (this grew later and later as we grew older) and get ALL the kids together and then go in and try to wake up mom and dad, and convince them that we HAVE to go downstairs!
• Doing everything we could to wake them up! And then finally getting them awake and then lining up to go downstairs.
• Having Christmas breakfast. Which was always waffles with strawberry and whip cream, sausage/bacon, eggs. Yum.

There are so many things that I love! This is just a handful over a coupel of days, but really there are traditions all month long. And they are all things that I hope to continue in my family for years to come!