Leading up to the Christmas Vacation

With the advent boxes/calendar type thing, we tried to focus more on moments than candy/treats. The first box had a CD of Christmas music I put together for Teh Boy. His very first, very own, Christmas music. I even decorated a cover. Nerd that I am.

This was one of the first advents. We picked it up on our weekend at Disney Land. There's a big lego store outside the park. This was to the family and is still up on the fridge. Legos ftw.

Some other fun stuff from teh advent boxes: enjoy hot chocolate while reading some favorite Christmas stories by the tree, building a fire (Gabe got to help me light it) and have regular reading time in front of it, make a card to give to someone else (I think I posted about that one before), etc. It was super fun. We had also gotten a gingerbread house kit to do for one of them, but we ran out of time and were SO busy on the trip (we'd taken it along) and did mini gingerbread houses anyway.

I loved watching them do this. Teh Boy got this set from us for his birthday. They're cute when they build together.













Another advent was hanging up the new ornaments.















*purrs* Here's the one, the other was in a picture from my previous 'crafty' post.














We went to the Christmas Boat Parade - 50th annual parade. Pretty sweet. Kind of a cool shot. Teh Boy, Forrest, Audrey, and I are all behind these musicians. We were sitting on the wall with our feet hanging on the side where the sand/water is with the sidewalk to our backs where there are then a bunch of houses (the backs of them) that are HUGELY decorated with tons of people walking around. This band came and stopped right behind us. It was amusing. And loud.

This was one of the last advents before going on teh vacation. We picked this gorgeous ornament up from Disney Land. It has cinnamon smelling potpourri in it. We lucked out with 3 family ornaments this year.









Another strange thing about living in California was that a friend's tree had blossomed as Fall was coming in and they had LEMONS in December. It was craziness. So they shared. They smell really nice when you put them down the disposal. Of course we ate some with sugar. *giggles* I couldn't get any non-blurry shots of his sour faces.