Merry Christmas & some Christmas "do's"

Merry Christmas from our family!
(Our photographer friends took these photos. They highly exceeded our expectations & we couldn't be more pleased! We highly recommend them.)

With Christmas almost here, I've been thinking about how to celebrate it meaningfully with our little family of three, and here's some "Christmas do's" I scribbled down today:

-Christmas light viewing drive & good eats or drinks (Loved that this year. We ate at our favorite Mexican grocery store deli & with warm drinks we drove up to the ritzy neighborhood with the amazing city view to look at lights. We took Ransom out of the car to look at the most impressive house at the top of the hill. We also visited the spot where AJ proposed to me & got out & hugged & kissed for memory's sake. There are houses being built there now, in what was a previously almost empty lot overlooking the city. I joked that someday we may have to live in one of them to have access to the precious spot.)
-Advent celebrating with a calendar (I didn't get my act together in time, so I'll have to try to be better prepared next year.)
-Play Christmas songs on the piano (My mom sent me a Christmas songbook that I've loved using this year!)
-Make pulla, a.k.a. Finnish coffee bread, a tradition in my family (Haven't made any yet, but there's still time. Actually, I need to hunt down the recipe.)
-Read Christmas books with Ransom (We're getting a little collection of them.)
-Play good Christmas music (This year it's been Charlie Brown, Sara Groves, Chicago, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Sufjan Stevens, and I discovered a new mini album by Hue & Hum that I might get for next year)
-Be intentional about giving $$ to the Salvation Army bell ringers who are parked outside store entrances, especially because I want to cultivate generosity in our family & model it for our kids. (I need to get better at this one.)
-Get Christmas shopping done early (Yay for avoiding the mall the week before Christmas!)
-Send Christmas photos to loved ones
-Go on an date with AJ for my birthday (Dec. 26...have yet to follow through with this one)

Have yourself a merry little Christmas!

"God chose to have his Son enter the world in a stable and be laid in filthy slop so we could know our sinful hearts are not too lowly of a place for him to occupy." --Jen Smidt, from an article called "The Dirty Manger"