The Gooches: Getting Ready For Christmas!

2011 has been a special Christmas. Up until this Christmas, our children have been either non-exsistant or to young to really get into the Christmas spirit. But, this Christmas was the first of many MAGICAL Christmases. Arlo (2.5) was old enough to really understand and get into the Christmas traditions that Tim and I have started.

So on December 2nd we all decorated the house. The boys got into the Christmas spirit by wearing funny headbands...

We all decorated the tree. The first ornaments that Arlo wanted to put on were the candy canes, as soon as Arlo would put a candy cane on, Cohen would take it off.

One tradition that Tim and I have started is everywhere we go we get an ornament. We have ornaments from hawaii, cancun, keyenta, cannon beach, disneyland, etc... We also have family ornaments from every year that we have been together and then we started buying the boys an ornament every year as well. It is something that Tim and my families both did for us. So our tree is filled with memories from our own childhoods as well as our own family memories that we have made together. Our tree is not a matching one, but it is so fun to decorate, because every ornament has a story.

Here is Arlo's and Cohen's 2011 ornaments, they picked them out themselves, notice it is already missing a hand, what you do not see is that the other hand has already been glued on. Both ornaments this year play music, which make them a magnet that the boys cannot keep their hands off of.

When we finished decorating the tree, we had to put it up on a chest and surround it by the couches because if we did not... well, we had to protect it from curious little hands!

We also decorated the rest of the house with a few odds and ends. Here are some fake poinsettias that I gave as a present in a white elephant game, then picked out for myself!

Here is Arlo's favorite decoration for the season. Tim and I have no idea where it came from or what it is, but when Arlo saw it he knew exactly what it was, he said "it's the liahona!"

Arlo's next favorite decoration is the m&m cracker. Yes, it dispenses m&m's... it does not make hard to understand why he loves it!

Tow's favorite decorations were all of them. Since we are just renting our house and we do not know how long we will be here, we did not put up our pictures and decorations because they are the hardest things to pack and unpack. So needless to say, when we finally put things up on our walls, Cohen could not get enough of it. On a daily basis (more like 5-10 times a day) Tow wants to be picked up and toted all around the house as he points to all the different decorations and we have to tell him the names of those decorations.

For the holidays we also did crafts together...

We made and played in snow...

I finally figured out what the snow was made of... Diaper Stuffing... it was a mess to clean up!

One of our favorite holiday activities is to drive around and look at Christmas lights. While we were driving we came upon this house... Tim says it is white trash, I call it WONDERFUL!!!