It's Begining to Look at Lot Like Christmas!

I remember that as a kid the holiday season seemed so wonderful and magical, and we are trying to give the same experience to Caden.

 

We had fun making melting snowman cookies.  

Caden had fun making a snowman out of marshmallows, and I have a few more holiday crafts for us to make. 

This is also our first year doing the Elf on the Shelf.  I was a little worried that this was going to be more work then I bargained for, but it has actually been really fun trying to come up new ideas.  Caden is always so excited to find our elf (his name is Jingle) in the morning and see what mischief he has gotten in to.  Here are some of our favorites so far. 

 



For those of you who don't know about Elf on the Shelf, Jingle watches Caden during the day to make sure that he is being good, and he uses his magic to return to the north pole and report to Santa every night.  He is always back by the morning, and sometimes he gets up to no good while we are sleeping. :)

Temple Lights

We love to go and see the Christmas lights at the temple, and hear the music!  This is Caden with our friends kids Regan and Kade.

Reading!

I decided that I wanted to teach Caden how to read, and I've been using this book called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons."  It has been so amazing!  I took this picture a couple of weeks ago, and he was able to read all of the words on the list that he is holding.  Now he is even able to read some sentences!  It's really been a great thing for us to do together, and it has been really exciting to celebrate his accomplishments! 

Caden Helping Put Up the Christmas Lights

The Zoo

Caden had so much fun playing with Harlie while we were camping that we had to invite them to the zoo too.  Sadly our membership expired yesterday, so this was our last zoo trip for a while.

 

Camping

A few weeks ago we went camping in the desert with some of my extended family.  Caden had so much fun playing with Harlie, my cousin's little girl, that he said it was his "best camping ever."  It was fun, but I think that I prefer the trees!