Christmas, Christmas, Time is Here

Christmas this year has been a little bit of a challenge for us.  Originally, when we anticipated building a home, we thought that we would be moved in by Christmas.  Therefore, when we packed and moved out of the Rigby home, all traces of Christmas were boxed up, taped up, and packed at the bottom of an abyss of boxes, never to be seen again until we moved into the new house.  Bye bye nativities, bye bye advent calendar, bye bye Christmas tree, and stockings, and decorations, and saddest of all, goodbye piece of candy I hid in the toe of my stocking to surprise myself when I hung them up this year :(

Therefore, this year we made some new traditions:

Like this Elf on the Shelf that my sister Kellie and her family so kindly gifted us for Christmas.  At first he served as a good reminder to the kids that Big Brother Arthur the Elf is always watching to see if they are naughty or nice.  He even got them out of bed in the morning as they raced up the stairs to check out his antics of the day.

However before I knew it Arthur started making messes...

And causing mischief... 

Most recently he was seen on a date with one of Charlotte's dollies where they enjoyed a midnight picnic of cookies and milk under the Christmas tree... very romantic.  The next night he was tied to the ceiling fan by a jealous GI Joe who was found showing his muscles with one arm and his arm around the aforementioned dolly with the other.  Poor Arthur.

Some of our traditions have had to be re-thought such as the Christmas tree: 

As our lovely fake tree was packed away, we decided to take a family excursion into the forest to cut down a real one this year.  We took the kids Thanksgiving morning and had such a wonderful time, we may just have to continue this tradition.

Because our ornaments, were packed away.  Be bought a few small boxes of balls and now we are working on making the rest. 

This is one of my favorites that we have made.  A nativity silhouette made with construction paper, tissue paper, and Glad press 'n seal.  So easy... so pretty.  I love the artistic ornaments that the kids keep adorning the tree with! 

Our poor stockings were packed away, so we bought $0.99 ones from Walmart this year which we will decorate soon as part of a Family Home evening.  Bronson actually has his real one because it is his first Christmas and I just made it this year.  And rather than hanging them by the chimney with care... as we don't have a chimney, we had to hang them above the window with worries about how Santa will get in the house. 

And some traditions may just be changed permanently.

Such as how I do my Gifts to Christ advent.  In the past I had a wooden advent calendar in which we opened a small door each day and had a piece of candy and a paper with a task to focus us on Christ.  However as we have expanded our family, I am hard up to fit all of the candy into each little door and I was quite limited on what kind of candy I could fit in.

This year, I used paper lunch sacks and printed the days of the month on them with my computer printer.

The kids decorated the clothes pins that hold the bags.

I love how they make a nice garland strung across our living room and they provide ample space for any candy of my choosing or a prize if I so desire.

And of course this is a new/old tradition at our home.  A baby to destroy the Christmas tree.

I will be so sad someday when no one takes all the ornaments off the tree, so I will enjoy it while I can!

I wish you all a wonderful season filled with the peace, love, and the Spirit of the season!