Getting ready for Christmas

Before I write about "getting ready for Christmas", I need to fill you all in on a special guest we had this past week. One of my dearest friends, Katie, came to visit. I was super excited for this visit since this is the first time, in a long time, that we have been able to spend some quality girlfriend time together. You see, she has been in England for the past for years and just recently moved back to the states with her husband. She is one of my most favorite people and I always have a great time with her. We spent the week just hanging out like we used to when we lived in Jacksonville. We shopped, ran errands, went out to eat, nothing super special but the time together was great! We stayed away from the sights and just hung out.

Thanks Katie, for coming to stay with us, next time Jay will have to come!

In order to get ready for Christmas, we had a few things on our list to do. We needed to get a picture with Santa Claus. I was a bit worried about this since Landon is at that age where he might totally freak out when he saw Santa. He didn't! It isn't the best picture but they are both in it and there are no melt downs. This is from my camera, the picture that I had to buy is much better.
We also had to get a family picture for our Christmas cards. Just before Katie left on Saturday, we had a mini photo shoot around the house and outside. This is one of my favorites but the glare of the sun on the window ruins it. There were plenty of other good ones to chose from for the card.
We hung our stockings. I absolutely love our stockings! I think they are my most favorite decoration. My Aunt Linda made them for all the cousins on my mom's side of the family and as we each get married, she makes one for our spouse and then as we add children, they each get one. If only we had a fireplace to hang them on.
Our tree is up and decorated. It doesn't look like much but we have quite a bit of ornaments on the tree. This year we finally had enough to not include our "filler" ornaments. For the past few years we have had colored balls and drummer boys to fill in the empty spaces on the tree, but this year I decided not to include them. We still have empty spaces, but not as many as before. It has been a tradition of mine and Andrew's to collect an ornaments from places that we visit together. We have been doing this before we were married. It's our way of getting a souvenir that will be used every year, plus each ornament now has a story.

And finally, the house is decorated. We always decorate the outside of the house, but this is the first year that we put lights outside. The picture didn't turn out as well as I had hoped but the house looks really nice all lit up.
We aren't totally ready for Christmas. I haven't sent out my cards, but they are ordered. I have cookies to make, though I'm not doing many this year. I still have presents to buy and send out and hoping that gets done by Wednesday.