December 6th

How many Christmasy activities can you cram into one day?? Well, we tried our best to do as many as possible!! Of course, our morning started by checking out our goodies from St. Nicholas. Movies, Nutcrackers, Beanie Boos, gold coins, and candy! So many goodies! We ventured off to check out our pockets and find Shed! In our pockets, our activity of the day was "Go See Santa at Crown Center!" That means--- leave school early!!! So after a short stay at school, I picked the boys up and we headed on down to Crown Center! First stop- Fritz's for lunch! Then it was down the hall to see Santa. There was no line (YAY!) so I kind of expected the boys to linger around Santa for a little while, but they hopped on his lap, told them their wishes, I snapped their picture, and then that was that. It was like 1 whole minute. I guess the job was done! Grant asked for a base for his army men and Wyatt asked for the Imaginext Batbot Xtreme. As he was walking off, Wyatt did ask Santa if he could come to our house on the 23rd because we will be leaving the 24th to head for the farm. Santa said, "Of course!" And with that, they were off to explore Gingerbread Village. We did a little bit more exploring around Crown Center and then headed off for a visit at the Family Tree Nursery! The poinsettias there was truly remarkable! Such a pretty sign! We were pretty tired after all our adventuring, so we headed home and snuggled up to watch Arthur Christmas! Such a cute movie!! We were waiting for Levi to get home from drill and then we loaded up for a visit to watch the Deanna Rose light show and take a spin around Christmas Place! Phew!! What a magical day filled with so many of our favorite Christmas traditions!! I LOVE having days with my fellas, experiencing Christmas magic through their little eyes!! My favorite!

St. Nicholas Day

St. Nicholas Day is a tradition on our house. The tradition goes all the way back to when I was a child and its one of the favorite days of the holiday season in our house. The boys were funny and thought of they put out their high-top basketball shoes, that maybe St. Nicholas would leave more goodies for them! Other than the traditional (chocolate) gold coins, they got some Smencils in their shoes. Everything else was too big and sat around their shoes!

 They also love how Shed is always nearby, diligently watching for St. Nicholas as well!

St. Nicholas Day

Waking up on December 6th always means that St. Nicholas came! Shed usually is close by too- he never wants to miss St. Nicholas's visit! We love traditions and this is one of our favorites! We read the story of St. Nicholas before we go to bed, then sit out our shoes and run down the stairs the next morning to see what was left! No gold coins this year, but lots of other goodies to enjoy!

 Horrible pictures- I know! Dark morning and quickly moving kids don't mix well for iPhones. But you get the idea!

Thanks for visiting St. Nicholas!

St. Nicholas Day

St. Nicholas Day is one of my favorite traditions to celebrate at Christmas! It tells the true story behind Santa Claus! I love to bring the real stories to life and show the boys that the magic of Christmas is a real thing! Because without St. Nicholas, we probably wouldn't have Santa Claus! And although that's not the reason for the season, the love behind it is! 

I found this book at the Christian bookstore and it was a wonderful story and easy for them to understand. 

 After we read the book, the boys put out their shoes in hopes that St. Nicholas would come! Shed kept an eye out too and decided he needed to read the St. Nicholas book too! And sure enough, that night, St. Nicholas came! He brought gold coins, just like he did the first day when he visited the three girls, except ours were made of chocolate! He also brought them a little toy, a snowglobe with the Nativity scene, and an orange. The boys were overjoyed!

I love seeing the magic of Christmas through their eyes. Their innocence, their love, their passion! It makes my heart happy to know that they have embraced the true reason for the season and find the magic through it all!!

St. Nicholas

A tradition I always celebrated as a kid was St. Nicholas! His feast day is Dec 6 and we celebrate his generous life of giving, especially to children! We read a story of St. Nicholas' life before bedtime. Traditionally, children set out their shoes for St. Nicholas to fill, but Grant decided stockings were a better idea because the first gift St. Nicholas ever gave were gold coins in a sock hung by the fireplace to dry. 

So the boys woke up to find that St. Nicholas came, bearing gifts, of course!

(sorry for the bad quality- dark mornings and iPhone's dont mix!)

St. Nicholas brought The Wonder Pets Save the Nutcracker DVD and a Candy Land book for Grant and a Max and Ruby Christmas DVD and a Candy Land book for Wyatt! Grant said, "St. Nicholas knew just what we liked!" 

St. Nicholas Day

St. Nicholas came last night while the boys were sleeping! Grant was very curious about St. Nicholas. Apparently he doesn't remember him coming the past two years. So we talked about what a giving and kind person he was. In order to differentiate between St. Nicholas and Santa Claus, I told Grant that St. Nicholas is Jesus' helper and he brings toys to little boys and girls who love Jesus. I told him about Nicholas giving all his toys away when he was a kid so other kids could have toys! He connected with that immediately since we had just made a donation of old toys yesterday! He thought that was pretty cool!

So before bed last night, the boys set their shoes out, we read a story about St. Nicholas and went to bed! Grant was so excited to see that St. Nicholas brought him a Batman Adventure set!!! Wyatt was a little bummed he didn't get a set too, but how was St. Nicholas to know he wouldn't appreciate a book from his FAVORITE author?!? Oh well!!  

I hope I can teach my boys the giving spirit like St. Nicholas has!