it's christmas time!

in our house, the holidays mean many things, but the first sign of christmas is the arrival of curtis, our elf on the shelf!

he showed up this year while we were in gulf shores, alabama for thanksgiving. we had a great time in gluf shores. our beach house was right on the beach. morgan loved playing in the sand, looking for seashells and "muscles" and getting in the water a little bit. i really didn't take any pictures though! i did get one of our beach house - ours is the third from the right. we stayed there with bo's family - his parents, grandparents, sister, aunt, uncle and cousins. it was really fun and relaxing!

another sign of christmas is the tree. we put ours up 2 weeks before thanksgiving because we knew we would be out of town on thanksgiving and morgan was out of town the weekend before thanksgiving.

since we don't have a fireplace, i have to get creative with our stockings....

morgan is so excited about christmas this year. it makes it so much fun! so far, we have been to the christmas parade, breakfast with santa and morgan's christmas program at school. at breakfast with santa, morgan sat on santa's lap and was just mesmerized by him. she kept looking at him and smiling. she planned to tell him that she wanted a baby doll and a bike, but i think she only said baby doll because she was so nervous and excited!

bo also makes christmas very fun - he wants morgan to have a ton of presents under the tree. he keeps counting what we've gotten and saying that it's not enough, she needs more! on christmas, i'll take a pic of them and of santa's presents too.

i am so blessed to have a husband who sees the value in making each holiday special and fun for morgan. i hope she has great memories of family traditions that she will continue when she has a family of her own.