It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

December has started off as a holly jolly Christmas time...and we are LOVING it! Saturday after Thanksgiving, we made our house festive for the holiday. We normally go cut down or pick out a real tree for the season, but since our family collectively has been sick for over a month we decided to opt out and steer clear of inviting any more allergies into our home :). Therefore, these little reindeer helped me create a little magic using trees from Max's camping room...

While this rogue elf just wanted to get into the ornaments to chunk them...haha!

The kids favorite part of the day was decorating their own trees for their room. Kason's tree consists of all our family hobbies... 

cycling, camping, skiing, fishing, Tech football, etc. While little lady's tree is a bit more whimsical...

 I was excited this year to add a felt tree to the mix. The kids are always wanting to rearrange the ornaments and piddle with our nice tree, so I thought this was a great outlet for them all month...

 I'm a bit of a fanatic when it comes to Christmas activities and visiting jolly Old St. Nick, so when I heard about the Four Seasons downtown hosting an open house to their gingerbread village I just knew we had to check it out.

 The theme this year was Wild West and Kason was in complete awe. He couldn't believe everything was made out of edible food!

While we viewed the gingerbread village and were waiting in line to meet the big man in red, Christmas cookies and mini-desserts were being passed out along with hot apple cider & champagne. What I loved about visiting Santa here was nobody was ushering kids though, so each family was able to go into the room and spend a good amount of time with Santa. Each kid got to sit on his lap and actually spend time talking with him...

Kason thought it was pretty neat...

although he had a really hard time telling him what he wanted because he can't think of a single thing. Oh no, I'm serious friends! He really doesn't care what Santa brings him so he has asked for a mystery gift since he said Santa knows him so well and what he will like. I'm thinking Santa is going to have some fun with this one! The other two munchkins, well...

let's just say they aren't too impressed with this fella. Oh that's right, they immediately started screaming when they walked into the room and saw him. Of course me being the pathological picture taker that I am just HAD to terrorize them for the classic Santa pic...poor kids! Alas, they didn't have to stay long and were rescued by Daddy who whisked them away for more cookies ;). Then today, our elf finally arrived for our annual North Pole Breakfast!

 I'm thinking he must have been stuck in traffic because he is several days late, but at least he brought a little snow dust from the north pole...

 My little elves love, LOVE Chippy even though he is a bit lazy and doesn't really move or do anything all month...hehe!

They don't really care, he just adds a bit more Christmas cheer around the Clayton Casa!

(*sidenote friends* We may have clothes on, but we still had bed head since this was happening around 6:30 this morning...eeek!)

We ho...ho...hope you are having a jingle bell good time so far like we are and we wish you a very merry Christmas month!