It's beginning to FEEL a lot like Christmas

Where we live right now, it could literally be 80 degrees on Christmas day.   It's a very rare occasion that we get snow.  Today, I'm seeing fun pictures on Facebook of friends and family playing in the snow where I grew up.  I long to play in the snow with them.  Today, we got some freezing rain and icy roads, which really provide no fun. But, I did get to turn the heater on and get all snuggly with the kids.

Watching the freezing rain with Abbey this morning..me in my leg warmers and her in princess slippers.   

And although we received no snow, we are going to have some winter weather fun indoors today--I'm thinking homemade hot cocoa and some homemade lentil soup tonight--yum!   The only thing we are missing right now is wood for our fireplace.

It's also beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here.

I'm loving how google+ made my lights twinkle (you can probably only see this action if viewing my blog on the website here--you probably won't see it in the email you receive if you subscribe to my blog.)

One more just because I think that is really cool!

  

Some other signs it's Christmas season--garland with Mommy's awful attempts at homemade bows decorate our stairway.  :-)

And baby Jesus gets to see our whole house, thanks to Abbey carrying him around all day.  :-)

The fisher price little people manger is one of those decorations that we pull out each year that gets played with all season long.  It's pretty entertaining to listen to Luke's story-lines for each of the figures.  As you can see here, that's Joseph on top of the stable (where the angel goes).  Mary is face down, kings are randomly placed (one is hanging out in the trough).  I think some of the other animals from the set are playing with some dinosaurs.  And, of course, baby Jesus is in Abbey's sweet little hand.

There are many sounds of Christmas season around here.  Of course, we have the wonderful sounds of Christmas carols playing that speak of Jesus birth, which is what we celebrate around here.  I absolutely love Christmas carols!  Other sounds come from some of the things we pull from the Christmas boxes (thankfully they get out once annually and for a short period of time).  These sounds include "Ice Ice Baby" (yes, the Vanilla Ice song) which is played (VERY LOUDLY) by a dancing, rapping, snowman.   Another lovely song is the song from Charlie Brown playing over and over from another wonderful Christmas toy/decoration.  Neither of these toys have volume buttons.   Both kids LOVE these toys.  Both of these toys are now hidden for a little while.  :-)  That's ok--they will enjoy them even more when we pull them back out of hiding.

But, all silliness aside, I absolutely love watching our kids experience the magic of Christmas.  We are hoping to take them to a live nativity and re-creation of Bethlehem village tomorrow so they can experience more of the Christmas magic.  So, be expecting lots of fun pictures of all of these new experiences for them.  Abbey is at such a fun age right now--actually both kids are.  Abbey is in this "oooooo" and "ahhhh" phase right now, where everything she experiences for the first time is so new and exciting.  She is having a blast taking the Christmas ornaments off of the tree.   Luke helped us decorate the tree this year while Abbey napped.  So, he is having a blast "re-decorating" every time Abbey removes the ornaments.  I think secretly he kind of hopes she goes over to the tree and begins removing ornaments.  :-)  Luke is at the fun age of asking "why" and trying to understand how everything works.  I am just really enjoying being home with them every day.