Christmastime

All of our decorations are up and the house looks so fun and festive.  Bob and I even spent a couple hours last night putting up the lights in the cold rain.  But it looks so pretty at night it was worth it.  Tucker loves the decorations.  The first thing he does after he wakes up in the morning is run downstairs and check to see if the tree is plugged in.  Since our house is small the decorations make everything seem a little more cluttered and I am usually ready to take them down right after Christmas but I am enjoying them for now.

Bob's mom made these stockings for us.  I can't believe that next year we are going to have five stockings hanging on our mantel.

This is probably my favorite decoration of all.  It is a Santa foot hanging from the ceiling.  It is supposed to look like he accidentally stepped through.  We bought it at goodwill a few years back it wasn't Christmas time and we only lived in an apartment so we couldn't put it up anyway.  But I loved it the second I saw it and I still think it is hilarious.  bob doesn't appreciate it as much as I do he says it doesn't make since because we have a two story house and it is on the first floor. I told him thats not the point

 

Our tree also looks very pretty this year. We haven't really been able to afford decorations before so last year we just made our own.  Then after Christmas we bought some so this is the first time we put up actual matching ones from the store.  Bob also has saved all of the ones he made and got growing up.  Some of them are pretty but others I would rather not put up, like the reindeer made out of dog biscuits.  How do you tell someone they can't put up their ornaments?

I think these ornaments are so cute.  Bob had the boy mouse growing up and I had the girl one.  I am glad that both of them got saved.  It is such a random thing that we both had one.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot since Sunday is centering Christmas on Christ.  I was asked to give a talk on it and am very excited about it even though I just gave a talk in June.  This will be my third talk in the 2 years we've been in the ward.  I am really going to focus on it this year and I have already been talking with Tucker about what we can give Jesus for birthday presents.  We aren't going to get very many presents for each other and the kids instead we are going to try to give presents that really honor the birth of the Savior.  The best way we can do that is to try to be more like the Savior.  For our next family home evening we are going to write down a list of gifts we want to give to Jesus.