It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

OK, so I am now confessing I bought all these stockings last year on Taobao, before I was pregnant and definitely before I knew I was having a girl. I figured if I never had a girl it would make a good gift someday...but am so glad I get to use it this year! Then I bought the plain ones for Chris and I off the real pottery barn website AFTER Christmas for very cheap last year too, so now we all have matching stockings.  I am hoping to find a monogrammer somewhere here too at some point and get our names on them.

We decorated the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but somehow I did not get any pictures of the event.  Chris and Austin spent a lot of the day out looking for white lights, which apparently are not "in" this year because they did not find any.  But Jason next door found some for us a few days later.

This year we are doing something new for Advent that I am excited about- a Jesse Tree.  The idea is to follow "the shoot" of Jesse (Jesus) from Creation to his birth  Every day we have a short devotional with an ornament the boys color depicting that story or lesson.  It starts with Creation, goes through the fall, Noah, Moses, David etc until the CHristmas story.  It combines with an Advent wreath, so on Sundays we light a candle correlating to the story.  The boys are liking it so far.  Some people have very elaborate crafts that go along with each day, but printable coloring circles seemed like enough of a challenge for me this year.

We have even had snow around here- today was the third day this week.  They have all only been an inch or two, but we did go play in it the first day.  I had no camera but a neighbor did so I am hoping to get those pictures soon.