Holiday Weekend

This past weekend was our village's Holiday Weekend! I love our village and I love Christmas so this is by far one of my favorite weekends!!

We started our weekend at the annual village tree lighting...

(I didn't bring my camera for the purpose of enjoying the moment....but then I just got my cell phone out and took pics....I guess I need to work on that!! :)

Saturday morning we went to Breakfast with Santa! Kenzie was very excited for this....she woke up and the first thing she said was "we have to go to breakfast with santa!".

The week prior she announced that she is a big girl now....she's three....she will sit on Santa's lap...so I was very excited to see how it would turn out!

Just what I expected...she got freaked out as soon as she saw him! Hahaha....but she did have fun looking at him from afar! :)

After BWS, we headed over to a local church for some Christmas crafts!
Boy, was I impressed with the crafts!!
I expected some coloring sheets, paper ornaments, etc.....which would have been fine, but there were so many neat crafts, cookies to decorate, prizes to be won and a book about the real meaning of Christmas!
Kenzie had a great time!
Decorating a gift bag....

This by far was her favorite part....she loved decorating the cookies!!!

(and mommy loved eating them later! :)

Later after crafts and lunch (which we ended up eating right there at the church!) we stopped by the library for a horse drawn "sleigh" ride!

Meet "Butterball" Kenzie's new favorite doggie! She has not replaced "Pups" she now carries them both everywhere....She explained to me that they are friends and when she leaves them home they miss her! Aww :)

We ended the weekend with church on Sunday!

It was such a great message and fit perfectly into this weekend!

Jeff and I are trying very hard not to take the true meaning of Christmas away and making it all about presents! It's very hard to do but we are making an effort to not buy tons of meaning less stuff just for the sake of having something to unwrap Christmas morning. We really don't want Kenzie to just expect tons and tons of presents and ignore what's truly important! It's hard since we would love to just keep buying but we really don't want her to be greedy and expect so much from us, Santa or our families! With that being said we are trying hard to follow the advice given by our pastor for the holiday season (2 things not to do, 1 thing to do):

*Do not buy what you can not afford

*Do not covet

*Celebrate the birth of Jesus

Kenzie lined up her dogs and asked me to take this picture....she loves her doggies! :)