Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens....

I don't know why they play that song at Christmas time. It just reminds me of Julie Andrews singing to the VonTrapp children during a rain storm - it never has brought images of Christmas to mind for me. Anyway... these are a few of my favorite things in our Christmas decorated home.

The advent calendars are a fairly recent tradition for us. I love this magnetic one that Trent bought for me a couple of years ago. The kids take turns getting to open the little door everyday and absolutely love it. We also have the cardboard/candy ones that the boys open each morning. They love those as well - what a treat to get a piece of chocolate in the morning! Last year I could not find the candy calendars anywhere. I finally found one at Pier 1 and paid about seven dollars for it - needless to say, they shared one that year. This year I found them in the candy store in the mall for a couple bucks each. Totally worth every penny!

I love the cross-stitched stockings that Gramma Lyn made for the boys. They are beautiful and such a made from the heart gift. Hopefully Hailey will get hers sometime soon. Hint Hint! These are definitely heirlooms that I hope they will cherish forever.


I love my nativity scenes. OK - I have a lot of them, so there are a lot of pictures following this. I have collected these for about twenty years. My first one was the all wooden one in the middle of the top photo from my Mom when I was still in high school. My sister has given me a bunch of them that she purchased during her worldly travels - many of those are my favorites because they are so unique. The biggest challenge I have (besides where to put them all) is this year Hailey is playing with them NON-STOP! We have "kid friendly" ones that she can play with all she wants, but of course, she hardly touches those.

My Willow Tree nativity from Trent. One of my favorites. You know how I love the Willow Tree!

My Dept. 56 "O Little Town of Bethlehem". I don't think they even make this one anymore. Love it!

A couple more shots of my immense collection! They all make me so happy!

Another favorite thing...our Christmas tree! I love that we get a huge tree every year and I love how much fun we have decorating it. The kids were so great at helping out this year. Spencer is such a big kid now. He took over my lighting assistant duties and helped Trent light the whole thing...when did he get so old? They all loved hanging the ornaments - they were so excited about finding thier own ornaments. Which reminds me of another tradition. Every year we get the kids an ornament that holds some sort of special meaning from the past year. I like to get the Hallmark ornaments because they are dated and they used to put a little memo card in the box to record a Christmas memory. They stopped including those, but I started to make my own. I love those memory cards. If we didn't have those I think we would lose a lot of the "stuff" that made that year special for our kids. How would we know that we bought Evan a cookie jar ornament for his second Christmas because at the time the only words he ever said were "daddy" and "cookie". How would we remember Spencer's third Christmas when he was so fascinated by the lights that we called him "light patrol" because every morning he would walk around the house and point at anything that lit up and shout "more! more!". That the same year he would play with his Little People nativity and ask "Baby Esus...where aaaa oooo". When we take the kids ornaments out of the box, we read the memory and all smile and laugh - the kids can't wait to hear the next one and beg to find one of "theirs" next. I love that we, and they, will always have these memories.

This is the second year that "Springle" has been with us. I can't say that he does wonders in curbing the bad behavior, but I think he helps a little. The best part is how excited the kids get when they get to find him every morning. Even Hailey thinks he is a hoot! They love him so much, he even motivated my non-art-loving son to draw this for no reason one morning...

Now that is love!

The Christmas cards from our family and friends is one of my ultimate favorite things! I am a mail freak to begin with, but at Christmas it is a hundred times worse. I am so excited to get the mail each day and see the pictures and read the annual letters. It is so much fun!

There is so much that I love about this time of year. I could go on and on but for now I will just share a few of my "favorite things"....