Celebrating Advent . Week 1

We've been busy opening up our little envelopes each morning to see what the new day brings to celebrate advent!

**Disclaimer: I just re-read this to proof it and wanted to make it clear that I by no means have it as "together" as it appears from this post. Most days I have no idea what is going in the envelope until a few minutes before the girls open it. And there have been just as many frustrating and tiring moments as there are happy ones. If I don't document what we have done, I really may not remember by the end of the month because life is such a blur right now! I know you only see the good on blogs so I'm reminding you now before you read anymore, that this is only the GOOD from the past week! :) I didn't take picture of the temper tantrums and meltdowns...

On the first day of December, we gave the girls their very own nativity to play with this year since Anna Cate was so infatuated with mine last year. I found it for $3 at LICS and liked that it looked "real."

Anna Cate was thrilled to have her very own baby Jesus and asked me to take her picture with him.

Both girls have loved having their own set to play with, but unfortunately they are very fragile and we already have a headless Joseph.

I have also been finding them in some interesting places. One morning I opened the dishwasher to find Mary and a sheep nestled down in the utensil holder.

And I don't think our stable is fairing much better. After only a week and a half, our manager has become dilapidated. The roof is falling off and the walls are coming apart, wonder why??

Thursday afternoon Aunt D's came over and we attempted pictures for the Christmas card.

I managed to get a few cute ones...

But the majority of them looked more like this:

Friday evening went to see the lights at the zoo with Nana and Grandaddy.

Caroline LOVED it! (actually both girls loved it, but I've never seen Caroline so excited before) This smile was plastered over her face the entire time we were there.

Look alive, Mary Catherine! Open those eyese! It is only the 3rd day of December...we still have 22 days left until Christmas!

Saturday morning Will worked on installing our bathroom sinks and adding the trim while the girls played "house" in the empty boxes. They were entertained all morning long so I had a chance to work on some gifts! The pictures don't look very christmasy, but we enjoyed a relaxing morning listening to Christmas music while everbody just did their own thing. I love days without a plan!

Anna Cate is usually right by Will's side "helping" when he is working on the bathroom.

And she is very into dressing herself right now, thus the polkadot tights with the summer dress over a long sleeve shirt! :)

We (I mean he) is almost done with the bathroom!! I can't wait to share pictures soon.

***

Sunday afternoon we headed to Taylor's Tree Farm to pick out our tree!

Then Sunday evening, we met Aunt Baylis and Andie downtown to watch the Christmas parade! It was FREEZING!

They were throwing candy to the crowd so I let Caroline have a sucker for the first time and this is how she sat through the entire parade. I don't think she took the sucker out of her mouth once.

On Monday, during our weekly trip to the grocery store, we picked up the ingredients to make peppermint marshmallows.

After naptime, we donned our aprons and got all set up for baking until I read the directions and realized it called for a candy thermometer. Ooops! We don't have a candy thermometer.

Caroline was thrilled...can you tell?

But Anna Cate quickly dried up those tears by letting Caroline wear her Cinderella dress. So we played dress-up instead for the rest of the afternoon.

Tuesday night we found the time to string the lights on the tree.

And then Wednesdaywe got to actually hang the ornaments to decorate the tree after Will got home from work. But I think the girls' favorite part were the empty ornament boxes that they crawled in to look at books after we were done.

So that brings us up to December 7. Think I'm going to stop there before this turns into the longest post ever written. We've had another fun and busy weekend and had something super special planned for Saturday. I'll give you two hints as to what we did:

Hint 1 & Hint 2

Until I find the time for another post...