Christmas Fun

My maternal grandmother instilled in me that the 12 Days of Christmas starts after Christmas so we celebrate up to "3 Wise Men Day" (some call it Epiphany) - January 6th - every year.  In fact, the 3 wise men used to bring my brother and I gifts on January 6th bundled in brown paper and left at our front door via their camels of course.

So for us, the tree is still up and the lights are still on.  Luckily, our beautiful 10' 4" tree is still looking pretty good even though we chopped it down in November!   We have had such a fun Christmas season though and I wanted to share some of the great things we got to do!

We visited Crown Center & go ice-skating!  The kids' first time.  Kenzie was not a fan, but Micah loved it!

We had a very wonderful family trip to Branson with my mom & Steve, Eli's parents, and Nick & Caitlin.  We stayed in a cute stone house and saw Silver Dollar City in all its Christmas glory PLUS rode on the Polar Express!

Saw Rudolph musical at the Coterie at Crown Center on December 26th.  If you are wondering why Kenzie is not smiling in this picture it is because she was VERY disappointed that "the Bumble" (the Abominable Snowman) was not present for the photo ops.  He's her favorite... which probably says quite a bit about her little personality.  ;-)

Also, I got to share Advent with the kids with a cool book by Ann Voskamp (one of my favorites!) called "Unwrapping Christmas" - every day was a new Bible passage and reading.  I downloaded the free coloring pages that came with the book and while I read they colored.  We had a blast with it, and it's been so special that they are getting old enough to understand so much and get a taste for why we really celebrate Christmas!  

I know I am forgetting so much, but those were the highlights for our family!