Christmastime

I took photos of the boys decorating the Christmas trees but have not gotten around to posting them yet.  Each year we put up two trees.  Our main tree is in our living room and has ornaments that I have collected over the years.  I love to get a new family ornament each year and I have been collecting ornaments from our travels since we got married.  It is a highlight of my Christmas season to unpack our ornaments and reminisce about Christmases past and trips that we have taken.  It brings me a lot of joy.  After Cruz was born I started a tradition of him having his own tree to decorate with ornaments that he makes.  Each year we make a colorful paper chain to wrap around the tree and we add the homemade ornaments to it.  I love seeing the ornaments the boys have made each year.  This tree will just get more and more special as they grow. 

Cruz adding an ornament to his tree.  He looks a little sneaky here, ha.  Up until this year I have put this tree in their bedroom.   This year they decided to put it in our dining room instead.  We have enjoyed looking at it at mealtimes each day.

Ben decorating his tree

The boys tree decorated all by themselves.

Our main tree in our living room

my boys after decorating our tree

This year before I could order a family ornament my mother-in-law surprised us with not one but two for 2015.  I think they are just the cutest things!

new ornament #1

new ornament #2

Cruz

Ben 

(when he had his black eye)

I mentioned in another post that we have watched a lot of Christmas movies this year.   I think that will be a new tradition for us especially now that the boys are getting bigger.  Several nights throughout each week we have had movie night.  My boys just love it.

They love Home Alone.  We have parts 1,2, and 3. 

We have watched Elf twice.  It is their favorite!

Our last movie night for the season was last night.  We always watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on the 23rd.  This year we drove into town to pick up some Taco Bell and had a picnic in the living room floor while we watched it.  

I baked cupcakes for our dessert.

After the movie I got out our Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  I had not put it out yet and was saving it for movie night.  It gave us a chance to talk about the fact that not everyone around us has a nicely decorated home with a Christmas tree and presents.  Many around us have very little.  We then each took some time to pray and ask God to bless those around us and meet their needs.  It was very sweet to hear my boys pray!  Afterwards we hung a few decorations on the tree and set it out as a reminder to be thankful for what we have.

my boys with our Charlie Brown tree

I'll end with a picture of the boys watching fireworks from our dining room window.  The hotel next door was shooting them for an event they were hosting.  It makes me excited about the fireworks that we'll see and hear tonight.  It's Christmas Eve!  We are so excited!!!  Merry Christmas everyone!