Leading up to Christmas: Holidays part 3

Stinky Piper taking a bath

Drawing on our photos

Lincoln watching his video from Santa

Making paper snowflakes

Stinky Piper found the candy stash

He even decorated the tree with undies!

Marshmallow Reindeer

Cute snowman ornaments

Stinky Piper toilet papered our dining room

Making oreo snowman

Grey's Button snowflake ornament

Pictures with Santa in Thailand

At the neighborhood Christmas festival

Decorating Christmas cookies

Candycane pizza

Oh, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Christmas. It is one of my favorite times of the year. I especially love seeing the excitement and joy from the boys from all of "magic" around the holidays. I wanted to make Christmas extra special this year, as of course it would be different for us. The weather was a big one. It takes a while for it to feel like Christmas when it is 80-90 degrees outside. So, we fixed that problem by adding snowflakes to our windows. At least we could pretend we were seeing snow. We also listened to Christmas music every day leading up to the 25th.

We were lucky enough to get a visit from our elf, Stinky Piper. The boys were afraid that he may not find us in Thailand, but he did and was very silly this year. (I found lots of cute ideas online and on Pinterest.) Stinky Piper drew funny faces on photos, went fishing for goldfish, decorated the tree with the boys undies, toilet papered our dining room and many other fun things. One of the favorite things the boys received from Stinky Piper was a personalized video from Santa (from Portable North Pole). I loved watching their faces as Santa said their names, where they lived, and showed them pictures of fun moments from the past year. It was priceless!

We also did our annual 25 Days of Christmas activities. We have all enjoyed this over the past couple of years. Every year on day one we make a countdown chain. We also made a few ornaments, fun Christmas food, crafts & and of course made Christmas cookies.

I am so glad that we have continued with the normal holiday traditions we had back in the states. It was fun to hear the boys talk about activities from past years and ideas they hoped would happen in the future. I love that they are excited about these yearly activities and it will be so fun to look back at all these pictures and see what fun we had as a family. Even though it didn't feel like Christmas outside, it felt like Christmas in our home.