Monday, January 2, 2012

Advent and Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas!!  We had a wonderful Advent season and Christmas.  We got a new tree this year, as we had just been using a small 4.5 ft one, so we had fun decorating it.  Little Alex loved it when we turned the lights on every day and Mary did very well with leaving the ornaments on the tree.
When we were little, my mom made us beautiful felt stockings.  I wanted to do the same thing for my kids, and ordered a pattern, but never found time, so my mom took over the project and it turned out beautifully!  Here is a pic of little Alex's stocking.  She is working on one for Mary now!



Here is the one she made me.  Adorable!


Grandma Fritz and aunt Janet made these cute foam decorations.  Little Alex want to hang them in his room.


We made salt dough ornaments, but I didn't get any pics of the finished ones. 



We went to Old Town Spring, met up with some friends and strolled around, enjoying the beautiful weather. 

Of course, we had to take the little train ride since Alex is obsessed with trains right now!


One of the little shops has lots of deep fried goodies, including this cheesecake that we tried.  Yummy!


Family picture on Christmas Eve before heading to Mass.  We went to the children's Mass at 4:00pm and it was a zoo.  Can't wait til we can try going to midnight Mass again!


When we got home we had a birthday party for Jesus!


I forgot to get candles so we had to use the "1" candle we had from Alex's 1st birthday.


Christmas morning pictures!  The big gifts this year were a play kitchen and tricycle  I think next year we are going to use the idea from this article and give each child just three gifts, like Jesus got.  The "gold" gift would be something the child really wants, the "frankincense" gift would be something to help him/her grow deeper in the Faith, and the "myrrh" gift  would be clothing or something for the body.  We really want our kids to focus on the reason we celebrate Christmas and not how many gift they will get.









I just LOVE this KidKraft vintage kitchen set!  I'm sure it will get lots of use for years to come. 





After naptime we headed to some friends house for Christmas dinner.  The kids got a few more gifts, and we had a delicious meal of ham, lots of yummy sides, and gourmet cupcakes for dessert.



They had a beautiful model train set upstairs that Alex was mesmerized by.




We spend the next few days relaxing and enjoying the new gifts.  Here is little Alex with his "Jesus cross"-- a sword from a sword and shield set some friends gave him that came from Medieval Times.



First time out on the new trike!





 I found these awesome Melissa and Doug wooden blocks for $6 on the JC Penny website.  They normally go for around $60 on Amazon!


A few more pics from December....





Standing!  I can't believe she will probably be walking within the next few months!

2 comments:

  1. Yay! She is wearing the socks!! Cute.

    We only do 3 gifts, too--great idea!

    The kiddo's are adorable. I love the Christmas mass picture, too, of the four of you.

    We miss you all!

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  2. Hello, I am visiting from Catholic moms online. We also live near Old Town Spring. We missed St. Nicholas this year but have seen him in years past. We go to St. Anthonoy's or Sts. Simon and Jude in the Woodlands. Since you write that you want to homeschool sometime I would recommend getting in touch with the Bread of Life group. I think you can get information from the St. Anthony website. Great Catholic homeschooling moms. Some with only young ones like you but many veterens like me that have been homeschooling forever. Your family is beautiful, Happy New Year!

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