Tis the Season!

I love getting ready for Christmas!  One of my favorite activities is putting up our Christmas tree.  We pick up ornaments from our travels during the year, and we have a log book where we record them, so we'll always know where they came from.  It's such a wonderful walk down memory lane each year as we pull out the ornaments; we reminisce and dream of future trips.  Here's this year's tree along with the new ornaments from 2015: Ryan's mission trip to India, Spring Break trip to SeaWorld and Clearwater Marine Aquarium, US Space and Rocket Center ornament from our Memorial Day weekend trip to Huntsville, Adler Planetarium ornament from our Father's Day weekend trip to Chicago, Ryan's mission trip to Tunisia, two ornaments from our recent trip to London: the crown from the gift shop at Westminster Abbey and a Kensington Palace ornament from our time there.

The girls always enjoy decorating their tree with their special ornaments: ones from trips, gifts and ones they have created.

This year, we gave Mia a bat/glove/ball ornament to mark her first season as a softball player, and we gave Lily a bat to commemorate her role as Bonnie the Bat in "Goldilocks and the Curse of the Porridge."

 I love putting out our different nativity scenes.  Mine was a gift from Meme from her trip to the Holy Land about 25 years ago; Ryan's was a gift from his Grandmama who we both loved.  The girls still like to put out and play with their Little People set.

 We've hung our stockings and put some of the girls' artwork up by the fireplace.  The anticipation is starting to build!

 I bought this piece off of Etsy last year, and I still love it.

We also decorated the girls' rooms a little with putting colorful lights around their windows, setting up their past Christmas artwork and placing fun holiday themed Kleenex boxes out.  Once the countdown calendar was hung up, it became official - we're ready for the Christmas season!