Kicking Off Christmas

Our usual tradition is to have our big Christmas kick-off day the friday after Thanksgiving. We put up the tree, decorate the house, bring out the Christmas music and make a day of it. This year, though, we were at Uncle Ryan's house for Thanksgiving (which was a lot of fun) so we put the tree up the weekend before

and started the holiday on Dec. 1st. This year we've decided try doing different RAOK's, Random Acts of Kindness, to get the focus on what Christmas is really all about. So far the kids and I have cleaned Russ's office, Isaac and I did Katie's chores for her, Katie and Eli brought candy canes to some neighbor kids, Russ and the boys shoveled our neighbors driveway, and we gave some cupcakes to the janitors at the high school. We have some other fun things planned and I love watching how the kids get excited about helping other people.

The boys and I started our Christmas baking as well. So far we've just done snowballs. They both helped mixing the ingredients and Eli crushed the pecans.

After they were done baking, Isaac helped to roll them in the "snow". A fun, albeit messy, job!We've been listening to lots of Christmas music too. Well, not really lots. More like one song over and over and over. And over. Isaac is very into the Heat Miser song from the movie The Year Without a Santa Clause so that's what I have running through my head every day. At least I like it too!