He's Got Sound Effects

Paxton Marshall really likes to make chomping/eating sounds whenever he's pretend or for real eating. He also likes to make "choo-choo" sounds when playing with trains, "vroom-vroom" sounds when playing with cars and trucks, snoring sounds when pretending to sleep, and animal sounds when playing with animal figurines. He's also getting good at a few animal noises. Specifically, he can tell you the sounds made by owls, horses, dogs, and cows. Lastly, when he's playing baby dolls with Vivi, he will make the baby cry. His sound effects get me every time.

Winston

Our "Elf on the Shelf's" name is Winston. Every night, we hide Winston in a new place and the kiddos have a ball looking for him and then whispering to him what the want for Christmas (we don't do the "make the elf do bad stuff" or "threaten the kids that the elf is going to tell Santa about them" {okay, we might have done that a couple of times} parts of this fad). They definitely think it's fun to find him each morning. And this year, Vivian found him almost every single morning. Here are a few places we hid him this month:

See ya next year, Winston!

Their Book Nook

Wes and I recently turned Gavin and Vivian's closet into a reading nook. We took everything out, put it in other rooms of the house, put a thick layer of blankets on the floor, took the door off, and put most of their books inside. Now, we read books at bedtime inside and they have been found going upstairs and playing in the book nook several times. We all love it.

Graham Cracker Village

A few weekends ago, we went over to the Whitehurst's house for some graham-cracker-village-building. First we made the graham cracker house structures, then we made trees (upside down ice cream cones), and then we decorated our houses. It was lots of fun and the four kids really loved making the village (and eating it).

Xmas Decorating

The day after Black Friday, we put up our Christmas decorations. As is our tradition, we chose the colors of this year's decor after Christmas last year (you know, so we could hit up all of this 50-75% off sales). Last year, we decided that this year would be red, white/silver, and bronze. In years past, we've done blue and pink (2009), greens and purples (2010), blues and greens and silver (2011), and jewel tones like purples, pinks, blues (2012). 

We started with a white light tree and a white tree skirt I picked up after the holidays last year. 

Then, we put on lots of red, brown, silver, bronze, and white ornaments.

The kids loved decorating the house in their Santa shirts.

After the tree was done, we also set up our little Christmas village on the buffet in the dining room and decorated the mantel in the living room. 

I really loved the colors this year. And yes, we already know what next year's theme is. You'll just have to wait and see...

Black Friday 2013

For the last three years, our Black Friday tradition has been to paint cookies. It's lots of fun and the kids really get into it. This year was no different.