'Tis the season

Bundled up for the night.

Grace patiently waits for daddy to open her candy cane.

The G girls.

In line to see Santa and Faith starts to wave and yell, "Hi Santa!"

Precious!

Faith is happy to stay on his lap.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

As you can tell from all the recent blog posts, I've had a tiny bit more time on my hands since Thanksgiving. We concluded the fall session of M2M in mid-November and next week, I'm wrapping up my Thursday morning bible study as we break until the new year. I've still got a little Christmas shopping to do but other than that, the cards are sent out and the house is decorated. The girls and I even gathered up a big bag of their gently used toys and donated them to kids who may not have a Christmas gift otherwise. I feel like I can really enjoy this special time of year with my family as we look forward to celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior! The girls have been having a blast. Last night, we went to our city's annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. They participated in a candy cane hunt, got their picture taken with Santa, and had a great time running around the big tree.

Earlier in the day, when I told them that we were probably going to see Santa in the evening, Faith told me that she was going to have her picture taken with him and sit on his lap! I don't know where she even got that idea since we've never done that before. She must have seen some kids at the mall do this. She also told me that she was going to show Santa her "ouwie" (a tiny scratch on her foot). Grace asked, "May I high-five him?" We weren't sure if we were even going to stand in line to take a picture with Santa but when we got there, the line was fairly short and moved quickly. There was no cost for the pictures because you had to bring your own camera so we thought, "OK, why not?" As you can tell, they loved it. Especially since every time they've seen Santa, he seems to be giving out candy! In this case, it was a big candy cane full of red and green M&M's. I know, I know, it's the holidays and I'm definitely trying to loosen up a bit. Anyway, it doesn't help when my dear hubby has a huge sweet tooth! Throughout the whole night, the girls had one candy cane and 5 M&M's each. Not bad, huh? They only went to bed about 45 minutes later than normal. Oh well, 'tis the season!