It's Christmas Time

When we got back from California, it kind of threw me for a loop that Christmas was barely 3 weeks away. Admittedly, it was a bit overwhelming, since I hadn't even begun to think about what to get the kids. Sure, I had some ideas, but I hadn't decided on anything, and with only one car, I had only 2 days a week in which to get any preparations done (in between running the rest of the errands I usually cram into those 2 days).

Christmas got a whole lot easier with this unexpected purchase, of course:

We bought the truck on a Monday, but Sunday night we had zero plans to get a second vehicle until next summer. It was very much a spur of the moment purchase, but it gave me the freedom to run errands all week (which led to me overdoing it and being so exhausted I got sick last weekend, oops). Of course, one of the most important errands was taking the girls to see Santa. We stopped at Bass Pro Shop for the "Santa's Wonderland". The girls got to shoot toy bows, race cars, and color. Connor wasn't entirely thrilled with the experience, but the girls loved it.

At one point, it got pretty cold (well, for us, at least). To combat it, we finally cleaned out our fireplace and tried it out. Of course, you can't have a fire without some hot cocoa. Not that the girls really drank too much of it. More was spilled on the fireplace than drank. The cookies, however, were gone rather quickly.

 (He's actually eating a graham cracker, but he was stuffing his face so we took a picture)

Connor recently discovered that Taz is pretty much the coolest toy ever. He spent last night chasing her around and got pretty upset when she finally decided she was done and put herself out of his reach. I am constantly amazed at how tolerant she is of being dragged around by the kids. In fact, she seems to enjoy it and will walk up to them for attention, even though she knows what kind of attention they tend to give.

We also decorated our tree last night. We went tree shopping Friday night. We found a vendor that sells beautiful, fresh trees, but with the tree being up for less than two weeks, I wasn't willing to spend the money (they were a little pricey), so we hit up Home Depot. Next year, though, we'll get our tree at the beginning of the month and we'll definitely have one of those beautiful, full trees from the other place.

So, it's been an eventful few weeks, but always in a good way. We'll end this update with a picture of the kids playing together. Love!