the 2nd & 3rd dates of christmas

i know that some of you may have been thinking that i was a bit crazy, trying to plan and execute 12 dates by christmas.
could it actually be done?
and could all of these dates be fun, and memorable (without costing a lot of $$$)?

YES!!

in the past couple of days we had 2 more dates!


the other night we gathered all of our holiday decorations and put them out around our house.
while we were decorating our home, we each enjoyed a nice cold glass of eggnog, and listened to the movie 'the santa clause' in the background.
wanting to take my time decorating, we ended up having a whole movie marathon and watched the entire 'santa clause' trilogy!

and last night, we had date #3!
the annual twinkle tour!

years ago, my family started a tradition: the twinkle tour.
on an evening during the holiday season (mostly christmas eve), we would stop at a gas station and each purchase a cup of hot chocolate, and then we would drive around looking at all of the nicely decorated homes, adorned with many bright christmas lights.
this year, james and i decided to do our own twinkle tour, and so we each grabbed a hot chocolate and drove around for over an hour, weaving in and out of a ton of residential streets (and even some busy city streets) and admired the lights and all of the beautiful architecture.