Preparations for Christmas

Since we were staying home for Christmas this year we wanted to do some fun things with the kids to start establishing some of our own family traditions and to just enjoy the excitement of the season together.

We took the kids to the mall to see "The Big Guy."   I don't think Charlie enjoyed it very much.

We started the tradition of the "Elf on the Shelf" this year.  We named our elf Ralphie and Hallie loved waking up every morning to see where he was hiding.  The story explaines that Ralphie would watch the kids all day and fly home to the North Pole every night and report to Santa about their behavior.

We decorated a gingerbread house together.

We went for the first time to Zoo Lights at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma.  The night we went was so busy that the zoo parking lot was filled to capacity and they were shuttling people in from a second location.  The line for the shuttle bus was really long and we heard it was just a 10 minute walk so we decided to walk instead of wait in line.  Turns out it was more like a 20 minute walk, up-hill the whole way, in total darkness.  Jared got pretty tired of carrying Hallie after awhile so we doubled the kids up in the single stoller for the remainder of our journey.  We were pretty excited when we finally made it to the zoo entrance.  Luckily the lights were beautiful and we had a really good time once we got there.

It was sooo cold that night.  Hallie looked so cute bundled up like a little eskimo.

We're excited to make Zoo Lights our new holiday tradition.