We've been busy elves...

My friend Libby gave me a tin of my FAVORITE cookies and I've eaten them all...along with all of the PromiseLand Eggnog, which is the BEST eggnog in the world. My grandpa used to eat these cookies by the tin-fulls and he was healthy until age 93...there must be some "secret" ingredient in them -- haha.

We went to "Night in Bethleham" last night and it is always one of our very favorite Christmas events...the kids talk about the petting zoo there all year long b/c they let you get inside the "zoo" with the animals and there are camels and goats and donkeys and more...this rabbit appreciates that our family only wears feaux-fur and supports PETA :)

J.R. is in heaven hanging out with the animals. Apparently he petted a goat too long b/c some of his sweater was chewed off when we got home!!

Caroline at the "Wheat-grinding-mill." She thinks she is Anna Kate and J.R.'s age and not a baby b/c she always wants to do whatever they are doing.

Our camera just does not capture the AWESOME job Jon did on our lights this year.

The other day J.R. wanted to put on his mouse suit and read one of our family's fave books, "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear." He is a hoot. He is such a boy...he just gets the "wiggles" out of nowhere where he has a burst of energy. He also loves to "tackle" anything that moves. But we're not really worried about him being over-the-top macho b/c he's afraid of our "blinking [Christmas] lights" and really picky about his outfits and shoes.

She loves this mirror that's waiting to be hung - ahem, Jon :)

We've been doing Advent Calendar activities every day...they are all things we do together as a family like going somewhere, reading and acting out a Christmas story together, a scavenger hunt and we went to a puppet show at the Galleria that turned out to be a circus preview, and lots of other things. The kids love it!!

We have decorated for Christmas and Anna Kate keeps "re-decorating" everything...she's so "Fancy Nancy" b/c she just has to accessorize our decorations.

The pets go NUTS at Christmas time....

just kidding...they could care less.

Decorating...

We did a little work on our house and Moses painted almost the entire downstairs walls and cut out an arch for me so I could get more light into our breakfast area and so it would make it feel bigger. Moses is the nicest person in the world and he goes to the wonderful church at the end of our street and he's a genius...he can do ANYTHING and he barely charges anything...like it was only $150 for my arch that I love. Thanks for telling us about him Sarah!!!

BEFORE (so boring, so dark)

Thanksgiving at the Mureens was tons of fun as usual...Abby is just absolutely the "Queen of Christmas" the way she transforms her home into Christmas before Thanksgiving...and it's definitely affected Jon because he can't wait for our house to get decorated for Christmas.....it makes me feel a little scroogish in comparison b/c all I can think about when decorating is how it provides more materials for the kids to make messes and how much work it is going to be to take it all down. Jon's family is also really into pictures...I always dread the family pictures, but am glad to have them when they are over. I think Jon's family really is the cutest family in the world!!!

We spent Thanksgiving Day with my family...this is my kind of pic...totally spontaneous and I don't even have be in it!! We also had a really fun "black Friday" shopping day together for my sister, Anna's, birthday...I have always called Anna, "money-bags" because she never spends money so she ALWAYS has some...I'm pretty much the opposite, so it's really fun to shop with her to see if I can succeed in getting her to "loan/give" me some money since I ran out of mine a long time ago.

As I said, we've been busy...time has been FLYING by since Thanksgiving. Also, this week we had a REALLY fun ornament exchange with the ladies from our church at our house. And today Jon has been working on an emergency project at the firm since 8am and it's now 12:45am. Lately, I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed by having 3 kids...I have no research to support this "feeling," but I feel like birth control hormones are artificial and unhealthy for my body and so you couldn't pay me $1million to take them, so I ordered a NFP book and I hope we can have a little "break" before more kids...like not having more until after Anna Kate starts kindergarten in a year and a half. If I do get pregnant any time soon, I am absolutely going to need a nanny (or several nannies -- ha!). Ok, so now I've sufficiently procrastinated doing my Christmas cards and I need to get back to them....