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

It is our favorite time of the year as Christmas is approaching very quickly!  The kids are SO very excited this year and it is so neat to watch and witness their excitement. We have attended a lot of fun activities in preparation for the holidays.

A few weeks ago we celebrated Thanksgiving with both sides of the family. The kids had a great time celebrating with their cousins.  They are both at ages now where they love to be around other kids and enjoy playing with just about anyone.  The night before Thanksgiving we did our family tradition of going to the Festival of Trees. The kids favorite part as always was the North Pole area that has many activities planned for the kids and of course Santa!  We all had a great time!

We took the kids to something new this year called Holiday Magic.  It is local here in town and there are lots of activities set up for the children and they get to visit Santa.  It was very fun and the kids are really getting involved in crafts and loved all the activities set up. They also had cookies and milk.

The kids were both very good helpers with decorating the tree this year.  They were very excited and really got into the decorating part.  We took them last weekend to see Disney on Ice which is another Holiday tradition for us. Both kids loved it and Briana was in awe of the Disney Princesses. We had our usual seats near the ice which is always fun.

This past weekend we had the annual Christmas Open House at Brody and Briana's school. They always put on a very nice event for the kids with games, cookie decorating and of course Santa.  We also attended my cousins wedding this weekend.  This is the first wedding the kids have been to in over 2 years.  They were both very excited and very well behaved, They loved dancing and eating cake.  We also had the Seng family Christmas in Cedar Rapids this weekend so it was a very busy weekend for us!

We had Brody's first parent/teacher conference this year the week of Thanksgiving. He is exceeding expectations and is doing wonderful. He teacher absolutely adores him and he feels the same about her (which makes me so happy). Briana continues to do very well in preschool as well. She is very attached to her teacher and I am very fond of her as well. They kids are both growing so much from their exposures at home and at school and we are noticing it all the time. Brody is really into reading, writing and drawing right now.  Briana loves to pretend and play dress up. Tea parties are her favorite at the moment. The best part of my day is watching the two of them play together.  They both play into each others interests and really have developed such a great relationship.  They are two peas in a pod.

Our weather has been kind of crazy this year. We have had some snow but is has all melted away now. We have some cold days and some warm days, it is very inconsistent. We get outside as much as we can even if it is just for a little bit.

The kids are begging for more snow so hopefully we can get a little more soon so they can play in it.  I always love a white Christmas!

Not much else is new, All the Christmas shopping is done and the presents are wrapped so now it is just time to wait for Santa to come. I may be more excited than the kids just to see their faces on Christmas morning!  We hope everyone has a very safe, healthy and Merry Christmas!!