its starting to look...

a lot like Christmas! It is only the first day of December and already the tree is up, most of the decorations, and the kids are in the mood! They were busy building a gingerbread train that grammy sent. They were so excited when they opened the box that they wanted to start putting that thing together right then and there. I said after dinner. But within 15 minutes Maggie had that thing out and was "getting it ready". So we dove right in. I think most of the candy ended up in their bellies...

and these lucky kids of mine also received advent calendars from Papa and Grandma. As you can see Jack was a little upset that he only got ONE piece of chocolate.

We decided this year that the kids were old enough to participate in the spirit of Christmas. We have always done Christmas angels, and still will, but this year I wanted to make things a little more fun. We are going to be Elfing people. Random and planned acts of kindness all done as secret Elves. I also made some adjustments to their advent calendars. I have added little notes to days. Things like take a ride with Santa on his train, bake holiday cookies, watch holiday movie, eat pizza in the car and look at lights. I hope that they come to realize that it is a wonderful thing to give... how good giving feels :)