Christmas Time!

(or "Christmas Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!" in baritone , if said by Emmett ;))

Well, it's official...I can now break out my Christmas spirit without fear of judgement from my husband or brother (Grinches!). My shopping is DONE, and I couldn't be happier...I tried really hard to pay attention when people mentioned "I like _________" and then store it away in the ol' memory banks...hopefully I did well. Now I've just got to wrap it all, and avoid all unnecessary shopping trips until January. Crowds really stress me out...James could happily spend all day at West Ed mall weaving in and out of the crowds, whereas the thought of doing that (especially doing that with 2 small children) is enough to give me heart palipitations. Thank you amazon.ca!!!

Emmett is really into Christmas this year...I got him a chocolate advent calendar, which he happily attacks each morning. He then spends most of the morning asking for more chocolate and trying to reach the top of the fridge to sneak some more of his calendar. I don't think we'll be hanging advent calendars on the wall like I remember doing for a few years yet. We also put up our "Beary Merry Christmas" calendar, which has a little bear that moves all around his house looking for Christmas. He likes it, but doesn't really get it yet - he just wants to take the bear off and play with it. I'm holding off on decorating and putting the tree up until next weekend...hopefully this will give the tree better chances of survival. Last year wasn't too bad except I noticed ornaments kept disappearing and then reappearing all over the house!

December itself isn't looking too jam packed, which is nice...I want to be able to relax a bit and just enjoy the holiday rather than run around all over the place. I'm going to try to focus more this year on the true meaning of Christmas...on Monday for family home evening we started teaching Emmett the Christmas story. They must be talking about it at nursery, or he's just picking it up super quick, because he could point out Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus right away. He also LOVES it when we sing Away in a Manger (he calls it "Baby Jesus song"). That really warms my heart, because I remember my grandpa singing that to me all the time to me when I was little, especially at bedtime when I would sleep over. I'm pretty sure he sang it all year round...maybe that was the only song he knew all the words to! That song will always make me think of Grandpa, and I'm so glad my little man loves it too.