a good busy

I may be slacking big time in a lot of areas and my house may be totally disastrous, but we are having fun with the kids this December.  We kicked it off with a welcome back party for Buddy, our elf.

We often have a big breakfast on Saturdays, but we tailored this one a bit for the occasion.

The one thing Bran cooks, aside from food on the grill, is pancakes.  They are yummy and we love them.  Since I wasn't cooking, I had time to decorate them.  :)

Our Buddy is pretty much used to just showing up in different hiding spots each morning, with the occasional 2-day spot --you know, after nights when he was working extra hard to prep for Christmas.  Unfortunately, Drew has caught wind of some much more fun elves out there (thanks, moms!), so we had to step up our game.  For me, that just meant getting on pinterest and copying those ideas of other over-achieving moms.  Here are a few of his beginning spots..

...and that was about the point where I dropped the elf pictures, so you'll have trust me that we are continuing until Christmas at which point Buddy will leave a goodbye note and gift for the boys and head back to the North Pole.

We added playing dress-up with a cute little 9-month old to the list of fun things to do at Christmas this year. Thanks aunt Kristin and Grammy!

And though we waited a little later in the month this year due to that very active 9-month old learning to stand up, we eventually went out to cut down our Christmas tree.

Benny liked the one ahead, but we thought it might be a little tall for our house  :)

the men worked hard

while Lil and I supported from the sidelines

and these two worked hard to help me decorate it.  Surprisingly enough, little girl has left it alone so far, even though it's a daily battle to keep her out of our regular tree.

We are filling the rest of the month with things like baking cookies, decorating our gingerbread house, visiting Santa and plenty of family movie nights watching all the Christmas classics.  I think the boys' favorite was driving around at night to see Christmas lights.  We made it a competition to see who could find a variety of objects and colors first, which meant this has continued on this month every time we are in the van after dark.  It is cute.  :)

My favorite thing we've been doing all month is our advent calendar.  I saw this idea last year and I had the MOPS group I was in make them.  Each door/day has a verse or set of verses from the Bible and a question to talk about that relates to the meaning of Christmas.  Of course, this is mostly done with Andrew, and both Brandon and I are so impressed with all he knows along with the questions he brings up.  We used to have a cute advent calendar that you fill with daily treats, but it was ruined due to our wet basement.  As fun as that was, I'm so thankful that we're doing this instead because of the focus it brings us daily on what this holiday is really about. 

I have this posted on the back - 25 family activities to do through the month - but without specifics dates and order so we can do them when it works for us.

My favorite thing I'm NOT doing this month is running around shopping!  My goal is to stay out of Walmart and the city of Boardman - both totally overwhelming at this point in the year!  So far I've done most Christmas shopping online especially through Amazon, Zulily and Old Navy - at night, in peace, and with my feet up.  Ahh.  It's been a good month.