enjoying the process » loving the journey, not just the destination

What a FUN night!  I have to admit I was a little nervous about spending $100 on something we knew very little about, but…. It was worth it!  We had so much fun & who knew Fillmore was such a cute town?  We’ve passed through hundreds of times on the way to Ventura, but last night we actually drove through the main section of town- near city hall, down Central. It’s a very charming little town- it reminds me of a small town in Ohio called Delaware. Yes, of course, I still realize it is Fillmore, but it’s quite charming. I think I might take my kids there in the daylight for a little photo shoot! Anyway, on to the important stuff: the photos!

I think I was more excited than the kids!

Kennedy waits patiently to board the train.

Canyon holds his ticket and finds his seat. They really made the train beautiful!

Canyon & I were the MOST excited!

We were so excited Jeff & Christine & Braiden joined us! Braiden had lots of fun, too!

Cade & James were comfy cozy. Cade didn’t want to wear his new Christmas PJ’s – he wanted to wear his Spiderman PJ’s (and Santa noticed:) It really was a fun night. Well worth the $100 dollars- great memories, great photos to scrapbook and a great time with friends! I recommend it!

A couple of years ago we decided to make our own holiday traditions for our family. When you enter into a marriage, you usually bring your own traditions from each family but we decided to incorporate both and add a few of our own.  One thing I was really excited about was our advent calendar. We decided to choose 25 activities that we wanted to do during the holiday season and fill each box with one thing. I added small slips of paper and every day one child (we take turns) opens the door and reads what fun thing we will do that day.  Here is our advent calendar (I found it at Target a few years ago):

Here are some of the things we’re doing this year:

Hang Christmas Lights, Make "snowman soup" (hot chocolate) and watch a Christmas Movie together, Write letters to Santa, Bake Christmas goodies and deliver them to our neighbors, Read the Christmas Story together, Take a ride on the North Pole Express in Fillmore, Have an indoor picnic, Listen to Christmas music and sing together, Take photos of each other, watch a family slide show (or Dvd of our family), Kids pick what they want for dinner & help mommy make it, Decorate a "breakfast in bed tray"  (one of our favorite traditions throughout the year is to bring breakfast in bed on special days like birthdays, Mother’s Day and Father’s day- so far we’ve never had a tray), Go to Nana & Papa’s house for tree trimming party, make paper snowflakes together, Make a Gingerbread house together (this year I found a gingerbread nativity scene), Make a Christmas 2007 video and interview everyone, take the subway to hollywood and watch a Christmas movie at the EL Capitan theater. We’ve obviously already done some of these, but I’m really looking forward to the rest of them!  I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have a game plan, the season just flies by and all of my great ideas of things to do – never get done. This way, we have no regrets at the end of the season 🙂 

My Christmas cards came via UPS yesterday!!!! I’m so excited to send them out! Can’t wait!

Tonight I’m wrapping presents so I can (hopefully) meet my deadline of November 30th to have all of my packages shipped- we’ll see if that actually happens…. Anywho- I LOVE to wrap presents and this year I’m doing something fun with my gift tags. Thought some of you might want to try it too. I just edited some of my photos and cropped them to a smaller size- printed them out with "to" and "from" information and ….

cute, no?  Hope some of you will play with the idea and let me know what you come up with 🙂 December is almost here 🙂 Can’t wait!

We decorated the house this weekend. We put up the tree (we weren’t sure it was going to fit this year since we lost our vaulted ceiling in the remodel and our tree is 10ft tall!), we listened to our HUGE assortment of yummy Christmas music, drank hot chocoate, made sugar cookies and decorated our beautiful tree. I LOVE decorating for Christmas! Well, I love decorating for anything, but this time of year makes me extra happy. I love the smells, the music, the Starbucks red Christmas cups, the movies…I love it all!

Now it’s back to another week of work… but it’s all worth it because Friday I get to go away for 3 days! Yes, some pregnant mommy pampering is in order:) So… I need to get all my work done in 4 days- wish me luck:)