It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I have loved seeing everyone's blog posts of Holiday decor.  This is not one of those posts.

I have been accused of being a Scrooge this year, but I disagree.  With this

Um, yeah we have graduated to climbing onto the kitchen counter!

going on at my house, I have decided to pick and choose what to spend my time and effort on.  That means I cut out the tree this year.  Do I miss it?  A little, but we are still festive in other ways.  We actually got the outside lights up this year, the mantle and stairs are decorated, and we put out our nativities (high and in rooms the babies don't go in).  We have our Holiday playlist going, not to mention the discovery of Pandora Radio.  It most certainly feels like Christmas at our house.

I have actually really enjoyed the time we have spent together this season too.  We are reading our Christmas books again this year.  We have looked at Christmas lights.  We've been playing games.  We've been doing our countdowns, including the Lego Advent which we love.  Next week is baking--I'm waiting for Tyler to be out of school so we can do it together.

One other thing we were able to do is go to breakfast with Santa.  This is how much the babies loved it:

But we had some good food, and Tyler sure found a lot of fun stuff to do.

So we are in Christmas mode here at our house.  Loving it, and counting down to the big day.