Christmas Time

It's been a wonderful Christmas season at our house. Every year I think it can't get any better, but then the next year rolls around and somehow it does. We have definitely entered the golden Christmas years with Mason when everything is magical and exciting. I plan on enjoying every second of them because before I know it the magic will be gone. What set this year apart from last year was Mason's anticipation. Last year Mason was excited about everything we were doing, but didn't really grasp the concept of time so telling him Christmas was next week meant nothing to him. Mason totally got it this year and the anticipation was half the fun. Brynn fed off all Mason's excitement and had no idea what was going on, but knew it had to be great if Mason was that excited. Here are some of our highlights from the Christmas season.

We started off with the traditional night of decorating the tree and covering the house with decorations. It was a lot of fun to turn up the Christmas music and let the kids help decorate. What wasn't so fun was redecorating the tree every night because Mason and Brynn both loved to take off the ornaments and hide them all over the house. Silly kids.We went to the Festival of Trees again this year. We almost didn't go because we were afraid we would be battling Brynn the entire time. Boy were we wrong. Brynn LOVED it. She got so excited about the trees and she walked around holding our hand like a big girl and never once tried to touch something she wasn't supposed to. Her favorite tree was the Elmo tree. Mason didn't care as much about the trees as finding all of the trains. I guess some things never change. Therefore his favorite tree was the one that had the polar express train. We did gingerbread houses with cousins at Grandma Nancy's. I can honestly say Mason did his 100% on his own. There was a lot of this as he covered his house in "snow".

And there was even more of this Brynn actually caught on pretty quick and would point to where she wanted the frosting then choose a piece of candy and stick it on. Most of the time she ended up picking the candy right back off and popping it in her mouth.

The finished products.

Temple square was beautiful. I love how excited Mason is to see the temple. I hope he always loves the temple this much.

Brynnie all bundled up.

We were lucky enough to go with our cousins the Reeses. Mason and Kayla, or should I say Buzz and Woody had a blast running around together.

We had the traditional Murray Family candlelight dinner. This year's nativity was a huge success starring Brynn, Kayla, TayLynn, Mason, Karissa, Keyana, Austin, Kenzi, and Tanner. Mason was very excited about his role as a wise man because he got to have a gift and ride a "camel". Our three wise men. Brynn was the most adorable angel, but wouldn't sit still long enough for a cute picture. A cute side story. We tried to keep the focus of Christmas on Jesus' birth and Mason fell in love with the nativity story. He watched the church's short little nativity movie honestly 8 times a night. One night after watching it he asked Scott if he wanted to play Mary and Joseph with him. Mason sat on the pillows and pretended to be Mary and Scott went around and knocked on all the doors to see if anyone had room. He loved playing with all the "stables" around our house. I think he really understood that Christmas is a big birthday party for Jesus.

The second annual Grandpa's Sleepover was a hit, even with the addition of two new babies. Here are the all the Hale grand kids in their Christmas jammies.

Brynn, Mason, Andrew, Rachel, Kennedy, Chase, and Cannon.

Brynn didn't want to cooperate for a girls picture. Hey, that sounds familiar.

The boys picture turned out so cute. Seeing Mason holding darling, not-so-little Andrew makes me almost see another baby in our future... or we'll just keep having more baby cousins... yeah, I like that plan better.

There is just a little glimpse of our Christmas Season.

Merry Christmas.