It's A Wonderful Life: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!

Ahhhh, Christmas! This really is my absolute favorite time of the year! This year it has been crazy, mostly in a good way! One of our favorite ways to get some holiday spirit is to get the decorations out. In the last couple of years, we have added the tradition of homemade gingerbread ornaments to the mix. This has become one of our favorite Christmas activities, and I was actually kind of proud of how well these turned out this year!

Aren't they beautiful?? The kids and I had a lot of fun making them, and they looked so pretty on the tree. As a bonus, the kids and their cousins had fun sneaking them from the tree for a snack. We found more than one gingerbread man amputee when we took the tree down! :)

Making the cookies wasn't quite enough to satisfy Tori's creative cravings, so she took a break to make an impromptu Santa mask. :)

Another Christmas tradition that we've created is going downtown to see the gingerbread displays at the Davenport Hotel and taking the kids to see Santa. This year we took Jaylee, Campbell, and Sawyer with us, and Grandma, Grandpa, Jill, Tyler, Damon, Tara, Ellis and Brad came with us.

Tori and Aaron by the big Christmas tree in the Davenport

Walking to the mall to see Santa...when did these girls grow up?? They already look like teenagers!

I got a really good picture of the kids with Santa, but it somehow was deleted from my camera. :( Thankfully, I still had this one!

We had a beautiful Christmas this year and once again enjoyed having our nightly devotional every night reading from the scriptures, singing Christmas hymns, and reading stories that helped us remember the true reason for celebrating the season. It was so wonderful to see Tori really get into the spirit of giving this year. She even made everyone homemade gifts, including a poem she wrote for Chewie, Brad, Grandma, and Grandpa:

Christmas morning, she was bouncing up and down, saying she was so excited. I assumed she was excited to open her presents, but then she added, "I'm so excited for everyone to get the gifts I made for them!" Seriously, I love that girl! Overall, it was a wonderful Christmas with lots of love and lots of family. We feel so incredibly blessed!