Embracing Christmas

Every year, without fail, I fall in love again with the Christmas season. Now that Anabelle is almost 3 (!!) she is in prime time training mode. And, train we have!

We begin our mornings with the littlest of Christmas things like A) She plugs the Christmas tree in herself, gazes longingly at the wrapped presents beneath it and vocally reminds us all that, "We can't open our presents because it's not Christmas yet."

B) She stands on the step stool to reach the Advent calendar and moves the snowdrop one day closer to Christmas Eve.

Of course, we then count the pockets to see how many days are left on our countdown.... which, she counts too, yet she always seems to think there will be 12 days left. Thought that a week ago, thought that yesterday, and I'm sure we'll be excited "12 days left!" tomorrow =) We then turn on pandora's Christmas station and we are ready to start the day. Oh, almost forgot to add that Anabelle's first greeting to me in the morning as of the past few weeks is, "Good Morning, Mommy Cow!" Now, before you start feeling sorry for me, let me explain =) Our favorite Christmas movie is, appropriately, "Annabelle's Wish"

If you haven't had the joy of watching it yet, please do! It's pretty 'safe' for these young ages, even though Anabelle has a love/hate relationship with the barn fire scene and any scene with the two bullies. We were introduced to it by our good friend, Judy, who has enjoyed the tradition of watching it every Christmas season with her family. Having an Anabelle, you better believe we've also adopted that tradition!

Last year, AB liked the movie, but we basically watched it in snippets and then moved on with our day. This year, oh my. We eat, sleep, breathe 'Annabelle's Wish"! The little cow's name in the movie is Annabelle, and so naturally our little Anabelle is now forever a COW. This is mostly a good thing as we have a lot of fun with pretending. The only potentially negative aspects of this role adoption lies in the fact that "Anabelle cow" can't walk like a normal human, so at any given moment, the cow will crawl on all fours. That means we are occasionally a crawling cow at the mall, at the grocery store, or when we are leaving in a rush and at the bottom of the dirty condo stairs. The other thing is, if Anabelle is a baby cow, well then naturally I am "Momma Cow." Hence, 'Good Morning, Mommy Cow!" Eh, I like it better than when Anabelle pretends to be Belle-- because you just know who I get to be in that scenario... "Mommy Beast." =)

I've also come to realize this year that I am c-r-a-z-y about Christmas books! There are so many 'must haves' I still want to add to our collection (J is for Jesus, The Stable Bob Built, Room for Little One, God Gave us Christmas...oh, I could go on!), but I'm restraining myself as I know there is still plenty of time and growing to do. Anabelle adores books though, so it really is fulfilling to have her library filled with fun, educational, and creative books. Oliver is starting to like flipping through books too, so I've been trying to nurture that. Poor guy definitely doesn't get as much focused reading time with Mom as AB did as a baby, but we're working on it. Anyway, I do love the ones that help explain the 5 w's of the Christmas season... ie, Why are we celebrating? Who are we celebrating? ... I've decided to just post pics of the books instead of giving a book review on each them, haha- You're welcome =) They are kinda lumped together in categories:

Books that help tell the Christmas story and/or share meaningful lessons

Christmas Books just for fun

(The 'My Penguin, Osbert' book is one of my favorites - just a cute one. And the Christmas cheerios book has kept the kids busy for hours!)

There are more, but I digress. Moving on! This year I finally found some stockings that I liked! (Adam is less particular, thus he gave me the go ahead whenever I found some good ones) So, I introduce to you, the Roberts Family stockings! (Well, two of them... we lost a fireplace/mantel in the move, so the stockings that can fit are now 'hung by the TV with care' - haha)

And now, my blogging time has abruptly come to an end! I'll leave you with this. Another favorite of the Christmas season = the annual Jesus Birthday Bash gift exchange. How else would Adam be able to score a pink snuggie?!? He deemed himself the Dread Pirate Roberts here and is, of course, acting out that scene from The Princess Bride

May your celebrations continue to be Merry & Bright! To be continued...