The magic of Christmas is upon us. The excitement is palpable around these parts. Even little Tate can explain, “After Thanksgiving, we are going to get our Christmas tree!” 

We’ve pulled out our seasonal fall and Thanksgiving books (I forgot to take out the Halloween books this year!), and I’m eager to start our holiday countdown experiences this year. 

My hope for our family is that the entire month of December will feel magical, not just Christmas morning. That’s part of why we don’t go crazy on Christmas morning with presents. 

This year we are getting Henry one big present: a subscription to a Kiwi Crate. A box will

Matt was out of town this past weekend, and I decided that the boys and I needed to have a big adventure in order to make the time pass quickly. On a whim, I texted one of my friends in Dallas to see if we could come for a visit. She was game! So Saturday morning, we made bread for our school’s potluck, hung out at the school for a little over an hour, and then hit the road for Dallas. We arrived around 4pm. 

Matt and I tend to be homebodies, so trekking to a distant city to stay with friends isn’t something we normally do. But it was

 

This Halloween we hosted our third annual neighborhood party. We buy inexpensive pizza, chop up some fruit, set out some water and Italian sodas, and bring some of the boys’ toys outside. We gather for about an hour in the driveway and on the front porch to play and eat. Then we go trick-or-treating as a group. 

This year, we set out:

Three Halloweens ago, we had just moved into our new house in a neighborhood that didn’t