Christmas Decorations and Other Stuff

I wish that I would have posted earlier! I have way too many things that I need to catch up on. Oh well. Here goes nothing!

We decorated our house for Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving. Here are a few pictures of our decorations...

Jon has a HUGE Nutcracker collection! This collector's box is really neat...

The Nutcrackers in our den...

The Nutcrackers on our piano...

Our Nativity table, my personal favorite. I want to collect as many Nativity sets as possible. The ones that we have now, I really love. Jon bought me the Willow Tree Nativity a few Christmases ago. The really tiny Nativity we bought in Ensenada on our belated honeymoon. The other ones were given to us as gifts.

Our Christmas tree. Not a great picture, sorry!

Lizzie's "pile" under the tree. It has a bunch of Christmas toys and books for her to play with.

We didn't have stockings, and so I bought these really cheap felt one's at Wall-Mart.

I put our names on them and wanted to decorate them somehow. I did Lizzie's like this, but I'm still deciding if I like it enough to do the same thing to the rest of the stockings.

Lizzie's little Christmas tree that we got from my parents. She decorated it with gingerbread cookies and a little star that she made at the creche last weekend. We are going to put other things on it too...hopefully soon.

Our Christmas Countdown Elf that my Mom made us last year...

Lizzie and I made this Gingerbread house yesterday. We got a kit from Sam's Club for about $10. It was really fun to make...Lizzie was going absolutely CRAZY for the candy. I have never seen her act like that before. She was running around the table, jumping on the chairs, climbing on top of the table, etc. -- crazy. I gave her teeth a really good brushing after we finished!!

Lizzie has enjoyed playing with these nativity refrigerator magnets that I made her...

And she has also enjoyed playing with this felt Nativity that we bought at Deseret Book when we were in Utah.

Now for a few pictures of my chunky little guy:

He is really starting to play with his toys...

And his smile lights up my life every single day!

We started giving him piano lessons. :)

We bought him this little bouncer toy for Christmas and we decided to give it to him early. He doesn't know the difference anyway, right?

I thought that this picture was so precious of him and his great-grandma:

Bryce has also taken up reading recently...what a smart little fellow!

Lizzie really adores her little brother...

My sister, Tara, and I tried to take some good pictures of our kids together for my parents, but it didn't quite work out. Bryce wasn't very happy, as you can tell.

This is Tara's son, Mikey. Lizzie really loves playing with Mikey. I feel so blessed to live so close to my sister!

This is Bryce and Tara's son, Riley. Riley is about 3 months older than Bryce. I'm sure that they will be such great friends one day! :)

Anyway, that's all!