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Friday, November 30, 2012

25 Days of Christmas for 2012


For the past 3 years, I have blogged every day throughout the month of December as part of our "25 Days of Christmas" series. It is a great way to record how we celebrate Christmas and the entire holiday season. I know that it will be a lot of fun to look back at our first Christmas' as husband and wife and have all of those memories cataloged. And this year we get to introduce and start new traditions with Ethan as a family!

So tomorrow, I am kicking off our 25 days of Christmas for 2012. I designed a new logo again this year to go along with the posts. I will post every day to discuss something Christmas. We can't wait to share our Christmas happenings with all of you and hope you look forward to following along as we countdown to Christmas! First up tomorrow, our 2012 Christmas tree!

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Thanksgiving Recap

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I am back to the cruel reality that is work, but only 4 weeks until Christmas break, so I'll focus on that! Since I was off the whole week, I wanted to get a lot of things done and spend lots of time with my boys. We did lots of shopping, crafting and decorating! The weekend before we went to a bunch of craft shows. I found a few cute new things.

Penguin outdoor sign and reindeer decoration

New ornaments

Cute Christmas sign

These are old vintage books cut in different letters - I did our initials!

We had lots of crafting time; I made a Rudolph wreath for Christmas and we made some cute turkey crafts with Ethan for Thanksgiving!




This little guy did lots of playing too!

On Thanksgiving Michael played poker which is a Thanksgiving tradition. I stayed home and got myself and little man ready. He was looking very dapper for Turkey day!


When Michael got home we headed to his parent's house for dinner. We hung out for a little while before the feast. Everything was really yummy as usual. Michael's Mom made place cards out of chocolate bars for all of us, it looked really cute!




Thankful for my little family!

The cutest centerpiece ever!



Rich eating his candy bar with a knife and fork, how do you eat yours with your hands?!! (Inside joke from Seinfeld)

After dinner we just relaxed in our turkey coma and talked and played with the kids. Ethan had a turkey coma and he didn't even eat any!




After Ethan woke up it was time to head to my family's Thanksgiving celebration for dessert. My Aunt Linda and Uncle Jim were hosting this year and we got there at the perfect time. They were finishing up the dishes and putting out the desserts, yum!

Ethan and cousin Jimmy

Grandma and Ethan

Papa and Ethan

We stayed for a couple of hours before we had to get the little man home to bed. It was a long day but it was nice to see so much of our family.

On Friday, we got up and just relaxed before getting ready and heading out. We stopped and got hot chocolate from Starbucks, cranked up the Christmas music and headed to start the Christmas season at my parent's house. Every year we put up their tree and its the kickoff of Christmas. I was excited to have Ethan be able to experience his first Christmas tradition. 

Playing with his new Christmas house from Fisher Price


Santa butt!


Grandma and Papa's village, its more like a metropolis!

We hung out and played for a little while before having lunch. Arla, Teddy and Lily came too and we all got started on the big tree. Ethan and Lily got to put the first ornaments on the tree too!







The finished tree!

We also set up my dad's Disney train and Ethan loved it! He sat there and watched it go around and around, he was transfixed!






We also made a craft with Ethan and Lily, we made their hand prints out of clay and hung them on Grandma and Papa's tree. My parent's dog Watson got to make an ornament too!



Grandma and Papa's house all decorated and lit up!

After all the decorating, we had some dinner and hung out for a while before heading home to put little man to bed.

Saturday we spent most of the day decorating our own house for Christmas! There were lots of things to unpack and place.


Saturday night we celebrated Michael's brother's birthday. We went out to dinner with a big group and had fun just talking and eating. We headed home after dinner and crashed. 

Sunday we needed to finish up our Christmas tree and it was football Sunday. We watched Love Actually, one of my favorite Christmas movies while we hung all the ornaments on the tree. We finished up the tree, made some lunch and just relaxed and watched football the rest of the day. The house is looking so festive now and I love it. It's so warm, cozy and colorful. I'll be doing a full post on our tree, and the rest of our decorations, but here's a sneak peek!


I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family. I'm so excited for the Christmas season now, we have so many fun things planned, I can't wait to share them with all of you!