Happy Advent!

Since my last post, I have to say... sleep is still going very well. Hallelujah. I feel like I've joined humanity again. ;) I don't have any 14 or 15 month updates or pictures of this girls. So here are some random snap shots I've taken recently and here's what we've been up to lately.

For Halloween, we did take the girls to a couple of houses to go Trick Or Treating. We had a lot of fun. I dressed Amelia as a Dinosaur and Eleanor was a Monkey. They both seemed to like getting dressed up. And Brad and I enjoyed the candy. ;)

Thanksgiving was great. We went to our friend's house and ate lots of food and hung out. I greatly enjoyed my dinner, especially since I ran a 10k Turkey Trot that morning. That was so exhilarating and I loved doing it. I have a whole other post about that coming up this weekend, so you have that to look forward to!

I thought I would talk a little about Advent in our house. Brad and I want to be intentional about focusing on Christ around Christmastime. We don't have any particular Advent traditions here yet, but we want to start them. This year, while the girls are still young, we are using this plan to read from the Jesus Storybook Bible. It's definitely NOT really a Bible so if you're looking for that, this is probably not the thing for you. It's more of a collection of stories inspired by scripture that "whispers His name" in each story (that's the tag line of the book).

In the future we will incorporate other Advent-y things when they are more age-appropriate. I've been very humbled this advent season to realize that these two little hearts have been entrusted to me. It makes it feel much more urgent to start these traditions and even just every day making it a point to show them who Christ is.

We also have some less heavy traditions going-- one of which is Elf on the Shelf. I know I named him last year but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was. So we re-named him Elfie (hopefully I won't forget...). I have a few shenanigans planned for Elfie but for the most part he just does simple things like hangs out in a stocking or jumps on the tree for a day. I think he will be a lot of fun every year. I don't plan to emphasize the fact that he's a scout elf sent to spy on you to report to Santa. That's just weird (and we've "lost" the book that goes with him). Our Elfie just comes out to help us celebrate Christmas time.

My family is in town for Christmas. Brad went up to Indiana to walk in his graduation ceremony at Perdue University. The girls and I were unable to go with him, but we will be watching him walk across the stage via web streaming. I'm so proud of Brad for finishing his Master's degree. It seems like more of an accomplishment after having two babies! :)