It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

everywhere you go...except that is for this blog!

Here at home, the trees are up and decorated,

and the stockings have been hung by the chimney with care.

But this darned blog will not seem to get into the spirit of Christmas. Shelly has such a cute blog layout and I wanted something festive as well. I tried using one of the premade layouts but it required a template change which cut all of my pictures and slideshows in half. As I did not want to go back and edit a ton of html, I tried to create my own layout. Did it work?? Uhh, not so much. Then I tried for some festive colors with an animated frame in place of the title. I finally decided the only answer to this dilemma was to say, "Fuh-get about it" and have some hot chocolate and peppermint candy. I'm a big enough woman (ha! ha! no pun intended but here at almost 35 weeks of pregnancy, that's a funny statement) to admit defeat and I do. A few months back, to avoid leaving toy stores with a ton of toys in hand, whenever the girls asked for a new toy, I just told them that Christmas was on its way and we should tell Santa what we wanted. Since that time, they've taken to speaking out loud to Santa anytime they see something they want. It usually goes like this, "Santa, can I have that for Christmas?" It appears that they're going to get most of what they've asked for in a few weeks time. Maybe I should give their tactic a try. So, here goes, "Santa, can I have some computer and blog savvy for Christmas?"

On a happier note, I'm so excited about Christmas. I really love this time of year. The girls and I put together a little matchbox advent calendar and I have books and activities planned for us each day leading up to Christmas.

For this first day of December, we read the story about "Snowflake Bentley", the first man to photograph a snowflake. He went through a lot to get that first picture. Snowflakes are so beautiful and cutting them out is terribly addictive. We all got into the swing of things and cut out several. We have two trees again this year (one in the dining room and one in the living room). The one in the living room is going to be our handmade tree. We've already added our snowflakes. Hopefully, with a month of craft activities, we'll fill the tree.





Otherwise we're steadily working on getting our Christmas cards and calendars together and out the door. Doug's been getting gifts purchased and I'm looking forward to just taking it easy, watching some Christmas movies and enjoying the season.