It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I'm more excited about the holidays this year than I have been for the past several years. It's like being a kid again--can we just speed through the next few days already?! This year, Holden's enough to comprehend it all a little better, and it's been fun to see Christmas through the eyes of a child again. He'll be getting almost everything he asked Santa for this year (he decided to add a 3-wheeler motorcycle to his list when it was a little too late for that....) and I can't wait to see his face on Christmas morning.

This year all of my pastel & bright-colored Christmas decor got the boot (a few years back I jumped on the pink + lime green + purple + aqua holiday trend) and I'm slowly replacing my holiday decor with traditional red and green. The old decor was just too girly and I was the only one in the house who like it. But all the red & green has put me in the mindset of having a good, old-fashioned Christmas. I always think back to the passage about Christmas in The Little House on the Prairie. It was so simple, yet when I read it as a child, it summed up everything I thought Christmas should be. For some reason, it's stuck with me all these years:

      Then Pa and Ma and Mr. Edwards sat by the fire and talked about Christmas times back in Tennessee and up north in the Big Woods.  But Mary and Laura looked at their beautiful cakes and played with their pennies and drank their water out of their new cups.  And little by little they licked and sucked their sticks of candy, till each stick was sharp-pointed on one end.
            That was a happy Christmas. 

All I want to do is create happy Christmas memories for Holden. Memories that he'll reminisce about with cousins by the fire someday. I hope he remembers the love, togetherness, generosity... and the magic. And all the little things. Every little adventure, and whatnot. :)

Four more sleeps 'til Christmas morning!