My Favorite Time of Year

I just LOVE this time of year...from the beginning of November through the middle of January.  I love fall and winter weather.  I love fall and winter clothes.  I love the atmosphere.  I love the extra time with family.  I love the excitement of my kids.  And I really love doing extra special things with and for my kids during this time.

While at church on Sunday, someone told me about this website called "Portable North Pole".  You can customize messages for your kids from Santa.  You can include pictures, special info about your child, etc.  And then Santa will put together a video and send an email to your child so they can watch his video to them.  It is absolutely the coolest thing. 

So I put together one for each of my oldest three kids and they got to watch them on Sunday evening...and yesterday evening...and they've already asked if they can watch them again tonight.  They were absolutely amazed that Santa would take time out of his busy schedule to make and send them a video.  It was too cute.  The look on Jacob's face when Santa told him that he knew that Jacob was trying to stop sucking his thumb (one of the personalizations I got to make), but he knew that Jacob could try even harder...well, it was priceless. 

How fun it is to be able to do things like this and see the look on your kids' faces!  While we teach our kids that Christmas is NOT about Santa, it's NOT about getting, and it's NOT about toys, we still savor these moments as much as possible....for I know that these moments are fleeting. 

The two older ones do understand that Christmas is about celebrating Jesus.  In fact, Madilyn's teacher told me that there was a little boy in their class the other day that was telling the class that Christmas is about Santa and Madilyn's "older sister" personality came out and told him "Uh-uh.  Christmas is about Jesus!".  By George....They're getting it!!!!!!!  And it makes this Momma's heart swell with pride. 

Like I said...I LOVE this time of year.  I pray that we can all slow down and enjoy each and every moment we have....to enjoy our kids, to enjoy family and friends, but, even more importantly, to prepare for the celebration of our Savior's birth. 

Two!!

Noah turned two last week.  And I am currently working on some sort of contraption I can put my kids in so time slows down.  I'll let you know how that goes...

We celebrated after dinner with a little party.  Just Mommy, Daddy, "B" (Noah's name for Benjamin), "Waliwyn" (Madilyn in 'Noah-speak'), Jacob (the only sibling's name he can pronounce clearly), and, of course, the Birthday Boy. 

It was fun to watch the older kids get so excited about Noah getting excited.  They just think he is hysterical...and enjoy his two year old antics.

When we go to Lubbock for Christmas, we will have a bigger celebration with grandparents, cousins, and aunts and uncles.  But it was so nice to have just a relaxing and fun celebration....just the 6 of us.

After taking Noah to the doctor yesterday for his two year check-up, I have discovered why none of the other boys' hand-me-downs fit Noah as well as they did Benjamin and Jacob when they were two.  Noah only weighs a pound less than his 4 1/2 year old brother does.  YIKES!  You can tell by looking at Noah that he is a big two year old.  Jacob was a big two year old.  But Noah is in the 80th percentile for his height and his weight.  None of our other three have ever been even in the 50th percentile.  I think Jacob might have hit right around the 50th percentile for his weight when he was around two, but it was after he turned two that he really started to get taller and slim up a bit.  We'll see if Noah does the same. 

We are so thankful for our not-so-little two year old.  He is such a fun-loving, pretty easy-going (if you can call a two year old easy-going), sibling-admiring, cuddly, always-on-the go kid.  I am so blessed to be his mommy.