I don’t know about you, but we have been having some major Christmas time fun at our house!!  I want to let the pictures do the talking (with a few captions from me – I can’t be completely silent – who are we kidding?)

Christmas Parade in Fuquay Varina (our little town outside of Raleigh).  We ended up running into a few different sets of friends from church who have small kids, so the kids had a blast playing together during the parade.  I love our church and that we have an abundance of kids at the same age together – makes for fun play dates and activities like these!  Kinsley loved the dancers and bands – the closer they got, the more she danced.  Our child dance?  Never (do you sense the sarcasm?).

Our elf (who was named Webster until we decided we didn’t like it and changed it to Scout – alas, the good side of doing Elf with a two year old) has found all kinds of fun places to hide.  It is hard to keep finding good places for him to hide when we can only hide him up high (if he was low, she would surely touch him when we weren’t look and discover he didn’t lose his magic – alas the bad side of doing Elf with a two year old).

Because we will be with my (April’s) family during Christmas, we celebrated Christmas with Ed’s family this past weekend.  Kinsley got an double-sided easel – which she loves way more than I ever thought she would!!  (PS…did you know that Ikea sells easels for only 14.99?!? – that is a steal if you know what other places charge).

She also got her first car!!  And would you know that they started her out with a BMW?  We did make them aware because they bought her this first car, they also had to continue the tradition by buying her first real car.  Yea, they laughed, but a momma can wish ;).

Not pictured:  lots of Christmas parties (with students on campus, with our team, and with friends), dinners and lunches with friends, our Advent Event we are doing every day (which I will show you when we finish!), Christmas pictures, reading the Christmas story every day, and lots more!!  And that’s just through the 12th!!

I love Christmas foremost because we celebrate Christ’s birth and that is central, but all of these other fun things are a bonus.  Praying you are having a merry Christmas season so far!