Tis' the Season...

So here is a little glimpse of what we have been up to prepping for Christmas...

To get us in the mood, the day after Thanksgiving we hit a couple of the sales, (we did not brave the storms however...we slept in and didn't leave our house until 11:00am)and we started putting up our Christmas decorations. That weekend we hung our lights and worked outside in the yard all day Saturday. It was so nice.

We are really excited for Christmas this year because McCoy is starting to understand more about what goes on and has been asking questions about why we celebrate. It has been a really good learning opportunity for him and for us. It's interesting finding ways to explain things so he will understand. At school he made a picture hanging of baby Jesus in the manager. He brought it home and said, "Look mom, I made baby Jesus becuase his birthday is coming up and we get to open his presents!" :) I tried my best to explain ot him that Jesus is the reason that we have presents in the first place and how the 3 Wise Men brought gifts to Jesus when he was born. The next day we went to a Christmas light display at Hoffmans Chocolate factory and they had a life size Nativity Scene. McCoy was facinated. After looking at the display for several minutes he asked, "Mom, do I get shiny presents too? (The frankenscense holder and Gold were very sparkely. LOL) This sparked a night full of questions about gifts, Jesus and Santa Clause. It's so fascinating to see him grasp at new concepts and hear how they unfold in his mind.
Here is McCoy and some of his buddies at Hoffman's Holiday Light Spectacular!

Our town does an annual Holiday Parade that we attended for the first time this year and it was also McCoy's first Parade ever. We were hesitant to see if he would enjoy it and actually sit through the whole thing and to our surprise he loved every minute of it. His favorite thing about the parade was the marching bands. He would get so excited when they would be coming up. He started imitating the trombone, trumpets and drum players. He also loved when the Star wars guys showed up. He plays an Xbox star wars game so he was so excited to see the "real" guys.


And last week was the Christmas Program for McCoy's school St. Peters. They sang Christmas songs from around the world. It was really cute. McCoy was not so thrilled about it though. He was not feeling to well that night and we had to wake him up from a long nap and he wasn't happy about it. And of course he didn't want to wear his church clothes, (what little boy does LOL), and then he thought we were going to leave him at school and he didn't want to stay there at night. It was drama drama. But reluctantly he went up on stage with his class and sang his songs. Arms were crossed for the first few songs but he started getting into it at the end and then was just so happy when it was over. Glade and I got a kick out of watching him on stage either way and we are so excited for future chances to watch our little guy. It was such a great reminder that being a parent is really the greatest joy!