Our Christmas living room

As you may have seen on Instagram, we set up our Christmas tree on James's birthday (an entire week before Thanksgiving!). James woke up on his fourth birthday barfing so instead of going out and about all day, like we were planning, we stayed home. After his nap he felt well enough to decorate, so that's what we did.

Since then we've spent nearly every spare moment enjoying the glowing lights and Nat King Cole's holiday station on Pandora. Juliet loves to dance.

After months of searching for Christmas pjs for the kids, I found the perfect pair via Pinterest. I fell in love. I knew I had to have them and ordered them right away so we could spend the entire month of December in our new jams.

This morning it was snowing and we were in the living room before the sun even was up. James wants to open the advent house (another Pinterest find I fell in love with after searching years for the perfect advent) each day and discover what a little elf left for him. One day it was a slinky, another day some candies, and today the elf had left a note in the advent and hidden foam play dough in the bathtub. James is thrilled.

Baby girl loves watching the snow fall too.

It has been so so cold for the last week. But a huge stack of Christmas books that they haven't seen since last Christmas are keeping them fairly entertained.

And the marble run that James got for his birthday has been the best toy we've ever owned. It is so fun to build and play with. Both kids love it. Juliet knows never to put the marbles in her mouth, and will tell you over and over again to make sure everyone knows the rules.

James loves to make the towers huge and put all the marbles down them at once.

Woosh!

I love to play with it too and often do even when the kids are not around.

And because this post is already a jumble of days, I'll add one more. James's birthday. As I mentioned, he woke up sick. Didn't want to even open his gifts. Finally I brought the one I knew he'd love above all the others into his room so he could open in his bed. 

Sure enough! His new excavator toy brightened him up!

He even had enough pep to go into the kitchen an open the rest of his gifts.

And after nap when we posed the idea of setting up the tree, he was all for it. Thank goodness his flu didn't last two days like mine did.

For James's birthday both kids received another pair of matching pjs! Seeing the two of them in matching jams makes me so happy.

James told us over and over again that his favorites were the "crispy red balls". He's so funny.

And I just had to add these photos of the two of them decorating the tree last year. I can not believe how quickly these babies grow up. To see all the photos, click here.

 I know. These two? Amazing.