Our December so far...

December has been good to us, so far! :) We started a tradition a few years ago and we always go on Thanksgiving weekend to get our Christmas tree. We love picking out our perfect tree. Ben is really in to Christmas, as am I, so we have to get a real tree and it has to be perfect. (For our little house, anyway) :) Our favorite still is going to cut it down ourselves, but we haven't done that for a few years. Anyway, we decorate our house and our tree on December 1st and start the advent calendar. This year we started a new tradition and read the story of the birth of baby Jesus with Tucker after all the decorating was done. The rest of the world (and us) hype up Santa so much, I thought it would be good to start out with the true meaning of Christmas. I also added a new thing to our advent. I have a little house that has doors that open and I usually just put candy in each drawer and call it good. Well, this year I put the candy in, but have included a Christmas time activity for each day, too. Tucker loves it. Some days it's reading a Christmas book, some days it's watching a Christmas movie, or doing a Christmas craft, or baking a Christmas treat. I just kind of randomly chose different activities to do all month long. Tucker and I have been having so much fun doing different things each day!
I love spending time like this with just our little family. And creating holiday memories and traditions with just the three of us.
Decorating the tree...

We ran into a few bumps along our path of decorating our house. Our chair broke and we (meaning, Ben) spent many hours, long after Tucker was in bed trying to fix the thing. This is what it looked like when we went to bed! :)

I made this JOY sign last year and when I went to put it up this year, the J was falling out of the frame. So I just grabbed my hot glue gun, and with only one little stick left quickly fixed it. I didn't realize until I had it on the wall that I 'fixed' it backwards! :) oops! But I had run out of hot glue sticks and so the J had to stay. It has been like that ever since! :)

But by the next day we had a beautifully decorated living room. I love just sitting in the peace and quietness of it at night after Tucker is asleep and it is lit by our Christmas tree lights! There is nothing like a warm and cozy Christmas living room in the winter! :)

In other news....it snowed today!! We've had a few skiffs so far, but this was the first major snowfall. I was in a go get 'em mood this morning (rare these days) and decided I would shovel our driveway. Ben usually takes care of that kind of thing, and being 7 months pregnant, I normally wouldn't have. But I got the bug. And Tucker wanted to play in the snow. So we went out to work! :) Tucker was so determined to help me shovel and after I saw his technique, I had to get a picture of it.
First, he would get the snow into the shovel...

Lift the shovel high above his head....

and dump the snow back on himself.

I don't know if he saw it in a movie or something, but no matter how many times I told him, he just kept on dumping the snow on himself! :) But he was determined to help me and we had a great time shoveling snow together! :)
We did do a pretty good job too, if I do say so myself. When Ben came home tonight he thought that my dad had come over with his snow blower! :) I should charge for these services! :) Granted, I couldn't feel my legs or walk for the rest of the day, but by golly we had a snow-free driveway! :)
I've also done a few photo shoots this month, out in the freezing temperatures. It was so beautiful up at Finch Arboretum last week, I had to snap this. I think it is beautiful up there no matter what season we are in! :)

Well, that is about it so far. We have family coming in all next weekend and the Holiday festivities will really begin!
I love this time of year!