Since Christmas is my very favorite time of year, you can only imagine how excited I am right now! Not for any particular reason except that it's Christmas time and we get to celebrate the birth of my Savior. How thrilling is that? I love everything about Christmas...the baking, the presents, the wrapping, the crowds, the smell in the air...every single thing.

Ben and I closed ourselves up in my closet the other day to divide out the gifts purchased to see if there are any obvious gaps for anyone. I was loving the whole thing! Remembering the gifts purchased months ago in preparation and thinking how much my kids are going to love everything.

One of my favorite things is having nativity sets all over the house. Over the years, I have purchased plastic, or kid-friendly sets for all my kids so that they can play all they want with them. It has always seemed wrong to me to yell at kids to not play with the baby Jesus! Does anyone else see the irony of that? Everyday I get out one of the sets and we go through the Christmas story. By the time Christmas day rolls around, my family is well-versed in the meaning of the day and then we can have fun with the presents they have under the tree.

Last night we did another one of our favorite pasttimes for this time of year. On ABC Family, they do the 25 days of Christmas, showing different movies. We snuggled all together to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas (even though we own it, they get a kick out of watching it on TV, go figure!). We made popcorn, had our blankets, water, other candies, and we were set! I could only smile watching all seven of us all together watching a fun movie.

We have set the tone for Christmas this year and I couldn't be happier! Tomorrow I will tell you about what we are starting tonight...another great tradition to help our family get the real meaning of Christmas. Tune in tomorrow!