It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas is by far my favorite holiday and I celebrate it all month of December!  The day after Thanksgiving I quickly put all my Thanksgiving decorations away and bust out my Christmas goodies.  Each year I find I wish I had more decorations, so this year right after Christmas I am going to stock up once things go on sale.  I did have to treat myself to a couple fun new trees for our entry table and lights for the mantle though.

I always like to get our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving but this year we went to Steamboat for a little kid free getaway, so we got it the following weekend. I did get Lia a fun, pink tree this year to put upstairs that we can decorate with my huge collection of Hallmark Barbie ornaments.  She LOVED it.  Ever since I was little, I dreamed of having a little girl someday so that we could create a special Barbie tree with all my ornaments.  I'm not sure who loves it more, her or me! 

Taylor worked his magic Thanksgiving weekend and put up all the lights outside our house.  It looks beautiful!  I especially love the little deer out front and sleigh. 

We ended up getting our tree the following weekend and I just love it!  It is perfectly shaped and smells so good!  Not too big and not too small.  It was so much fun having Lia be able to help me decorate this year... although it certainly took longer. :)  Somehow we lost our tree skirt too, but found this adorable one at Kohl's.  Here is the finished product.

Here is my favorite ornament that Lia surprised me with that they made at her school.

Last weekend we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens lights at Chatfield with Chad, Janna, Addi and Lily. It was FREEZING but the girls had so much fun going on a walk. Much less crowded than the one last year!  Here are a few cute pics.  Love the hand holding!

Yesterday we went and saw Santa.  I was shocked!!! Lia just walked right up to him by herself, sat on his lap with her babies and smiled.  She was not the slightest bit scared of him.  It was nearly impossible to get a picture of her without her baby in front of her face, but I managed to snag a couple.  She even told him what she wanted... a Minnie Mouse shirt.  (time for me to get back to the store!)

Then last night, Lia and I had a girls night in.  We had delicious microwave dinners, picnic style, in our jammies in the family room while watching movies and snuggled for hours. 

One week till Christmas... I CANNOT WAIT!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Halloween & November Family Photos!!

We have been so busy this holiday season I have had a hard time sitting down to blog.  I have plopped Lia down in front of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse right now with some fruit snacks so that I can do a couple quick posts to catch us up.

First- Halloween

This Halloween Lia was Minnie Mouse.  BEYOND cute!!  She thought she was a Minnie ballerina.

The week before Halloween, her school had a carnival at the school with fun activities and treats in each classroom.  She was shy as usual but had a blast!

Lia loved the rubber ducky game and decorating cookies

We carved pumpkins together- Lia loved scooping the seeds out.  Her pumpkin was Minnie Mouse of course!

Then on Halloween, we went over to Kia & Jay's house and Lia went trick or treating w/ Ada and Evi.  They had a blast, acted like pros the whole time, going from house to house, saying trick or treat and thank you!  Luckily it was another warm night here this year so no coats were needed.  I dressed up too, as Pocahantas for the trick or treating.

Now to November.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my Dad's this year with him, Shellie, Carlie, Adam, Alyssa and Olivia. Unfortunately, none of us took any pics- but my brother did snap this adorable pic of Lia.

We also did our family photos with my wonderfully talented Stepmom, Shellie.  We found an open field near our house with stunning mountain views.  You can't tell from the photos but it was only about 20 degrees out.  It was freezing!!  Other than that the weather was ideal- beautiful, sunny morning with incredibly blue skies.  Here are a few of the amazing photos she captured. 



This one makes me laugh - we were pretending to do engagement photos. :)

That's it... we are halfway through December now.   We have decorated our tree and house and are loving counting down to Christmas.

More blogs to come as I find time!

Happy Holidays from all of us to you!

Pumpkin time!

Now that I'm finally feeling better after a nasty round of pneumonia, we decided to head
out to the pumpkin patch at Chatfield Botanic Gardens to find our perfect pumpkins and also find Lia a new winter hat!

Success in both!

It snowed here yesterday but you would never know it today. 50's and sunny. It felt great! Hard to believe this is what we woke up to yesterday.







Beautiful and sunny today! First stop at the pumpkin festival was for Lias hat. She was very particular and said no to just about every hat i picked. Then we finally found the one!!

New pink hat with pink flower. Lia picked out both and was very excited about her new hat.






Posing with mama before going in to pick pumpkins







Searching for the perfect pumpkin







Time out for a little candy break










This one is my all time favorite!




Having some strawberry lemonade










Pushing my pumpkins back to the car













Our pumpkins at home.




I just love Fall and all the fabulous holidays in the next few months. Definitely my favorite time of year! Got out all my halloween decorations this last weekend.

My little scarecrow friend...



Made a little trip to Hobby Lobby and picked up this adorable table runner and black, sparkly pumpkin. Love!



Looking forward to lots of Halloween celebrations to come!

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