Deck the Halls

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas at our house. We (just barely) managed to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to start trimming the place for the holiday. This year we decided to put up lights on the trees between our house and the road. James spent a lot of time clearing brush and removing poison ivy from that area this summer and it looks great. I'm so happy we did it and our little rock garden and trees look great with twinkle lights.

We have two special visitors this year. We are by-passing the "Elf on the Shelf" tradition for one that perhaps lends itself better to more meaningful life lessons. So, instead, Santa sent us two "kindness elves" named Lolly and Jojo. They are here with us for the month of December and will help us to at least one kind act a day leading up to Christmas. I'm falling behind on my posts but I've been trying to share some of what we've been up to on Instagram.

For the past four years we have picked out a live Christmas tree that we can plant in our yard after the holiday. So far, only one has died and I think that's because we didn't water it during the drought this past summer. This year's tree is by far the biggest we've ever had.

We also got to visit Santa. Cece is lukewarm on him and Sully wants nothing to do with the big man in red. Can you tell? Cece does like talking about Santa though. She also talks a lot about presents and enjoys reading Christmas books before bed each night. This year should be a fun one. Christmas is so much better when you have little ones!