It's the most wonderful time of the year!!

Yay!! The holidays are upon us, I love this time of the year!! We get to spend it TOGETHER this year!! We get Thanksgiving AND Christmas this year, which we are so excited about!! The past two years we were apart from Daddy on Thanksgiving and last year Christmas as well. This year we are blessed to be together!! Also this year we are close to family and close friends, which may not happen again next year... Thanksgiving was great! We went to both of my grandparents houses in RI! We had thanksgiving 'lunch' at my nana and papas and thanksgiving 'dinner' with my grandma and grandpa. It was wonderful!! Lots of laughs and love. Our family tradition the day after thanksgiving is to decorate for Christmas and it's always fun! The kids look forward to it every year and so do we! This year we started a new tradition as well. We are using a silly thing called 'Elf on a shelf'. At first I was skeptical about it (plus, the elf kinda looks wierd) but Nic thought it would be fun for the kids. This is the first day our elf 'Jingle' came to our house. The kids were sooooooo excited!! They were 'talking' to it (especially Preston). It was a RIOT! I wish I had gotten Preston on camera. He told Jingle to please tell Santa he didn't want to be on the naughty list, hehe. I have many friends who do not do Santa in their households but we have a different way of viewing the Santa tradition. Since we emphasize Christmas being Jesus' birth, we use Santa as an example. He brings each of the kids 3 gifts just like the wise men brought to Jesus. It's a good way to incorporate Santa without making the holiday about him, but making it about our Lords birth!! Anyway, just a little update and wanted to share about our new Elf!! :D Here he is.... see if you can find him. :)