So This is Christmas

It looks like Christmas time is here again and I have no idea how this year went by so fast!  We decided to cut our Thanksgiving trip to Island Park one day short so that we could come home and decorate for Christmas, because decorating for Christmas is no small feat!

The first thing to go up is my beautiful Nativity.  This is the Nativity my mom had when we were kids and I loved it so much she gave me one of my own.  I just love it.

Then out came the ornaments:

Tanner was trying to play the music on this miniature piano to see what song it was.

And when that wasn't working out so great, he decided to just play the piano like Schroeder on Charlie Brown.  Did you know that 12 year olds could still be so silly? 

Last year we got a 12 foot Christmas tree because our ceilings are so tall in this house... but now it requires us all to decorate on a ladder!

And lucky for us the snow has been plentiful this year adding to that magical Christmas feeling.  The snow conditions were just right yesterday to make our annual family igloo, so we all headed out the door first thing in the morning bundled up to work! 

And now that the kids are older the work went fast and the igloo went up in just a couple of hours!

It's good to know if we ever move to Alaska that we would survive if we work together as a family.

And this scene just warmed my heart this morning.  Ian snuggled up with Whitlee next to the tree and read her some of her favorite Christmas stories.