I absolutely love our family tradition of a Christmas Countdown. It's great to carve out a little bit of time together each day in such a busy season. I try (but don't always succeed!) in taking a picture of each day's activity. So here is the 2022 countdown:
Day 1: Reading Luke 2:1-20 together to remind us the reason we are celebrating the Christmas season. God came to us through His son, Jesus.
Day 2: Christmas edition of Would You Rather. We didn't complete the whole book, just a few questions since today was Mia's first performance of Little Mermaid Jr. My favorite question was "would you rather be driven around in a limo by the Grinch or in a garbage truck by Santa?" We unanimously went with Grinch in a limo!
Day 3: Mad Libs in the morning before Mia's two Saturday performances. Bama was in town so she was able to participate with us which added to the fun.
Day 4: We watched Mia's final performance of Little Mermaid Jr and decided to have a quiet evening at home watching the next episode of Only Murders in the Building; we're all loving it!
Day 5: We pick items from the Samaritan's Purse gift catalog to help others. Lily opted to help feed a hungry baby and provide blankets and bedding. Mia opted to provide a dairy goat to a farmer's family.
Day 6: We had a nice little dessert after dinner which was a treat. Break and Bake sugar cookies with red and green M&M's on them for the win!
Day 7: Anastasia at the Fox Theater! This has been a favorite movie of Ryan and mine for years. It has some of the most beautiful music of any movie. We have wanted to see this theatrical production ever since it came out, and we couldn't resist going since it came to Atlanta. The Fox is always a beautiful venue too. This show did not disappoint; it was fantastic!
Day 8: Stonehaven's Christmas program which was held at Church of the Apostles this year. This is an overhead shot of the whole student body singing together which was lovely. It was fun to see Ryan go up and sing with the teachers this year too!
My three favorite Stonehavenites!
Day 9: Stranger Things exhibit down at Pullman Yards! We had six tickets so Lily brought her friend, Lauren Martin, and Mia brought her friend, Judson Sampler. All four of them are really big Stranger Things fans, so we had a great time doing this together!
Day 10: Okay, so this didn't go as planned! We were going to watch what I thought was a Rockette's special on tv. Turns out it was a made for tv movie where they go see the Rockettes perform which is absolutely not the same thing. We realized this in the intro and decided to change paths. More Only Murders in the Building for us!
Day 11: Reading one of my favorite Christmas books together: The Crippled Lamb
Day 12: Family Game Night. We had a new family pack of Cards Against Humanity, so we played an abbreviated version of this for a few minutes this evening.
Day 13: No picture to share because it was an evening of prayer. We prayed for each other and one other person or people group on our hearts. It's always good to go before the Lord together as a family.
Day 14: Work together to stuff, seal, label, and stamp our Christmas cards so they could out in the next day's mail. I loved our more whimsical cards this year!
Day 15: Again, no picture from today. It was a really hectic day for all of us, and we had approximately 5 minutes together. So, we each told our favorite Christmas or wintertime joke. Mine? "Why was the snowman's dog called Frost? Because Frost bites."
Day 16: Christmas move night at home. We went with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and it was hilarious! The girls had never seen before, and Ryan and I aren't sure we'd seen it entirely before. We were all laughing at this one.
Day 17: We drove to Birmingham for Christmas celebrations with Bama and family. Ryan and I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon visiting with Tay and Jonathan Drescher which was nice; it's been awhile since we caught up in person. We had a great time together with family that evening and again over breakfast the following morning. We are thankful for our family! Look at Bama with her grandkids: from left it's Merritt, Liam, Lindley, Mia, Lucy, Lily, Emma, and Caroline. Josh and Amy's Baby #4 will join us next year!
Day 18: We had an evening at Michael and Jodi's house to celebrate with the Brown side of the family. It was a lovely evening filled with delicious food, laughter, and family!
Day 19: Alas, no picture of this evening either. We finished up season two of Only Murders, and it was awesome; we can't wait for season three!
Day 20: We completed an escape room at home; I'm proud to say we escaped!
Day 21: Ryan and I set up a Plinko type game on our dining room table. Lily had two friends over that evening, Raegan Miley and Kate Jackson. We were happy to have them join in! $20 was on the line for the winner. Technically speaking, I won, but we wanted one of the kids to win, so we started a new round just for them. Congrats to Mia on her win!
Day 22: We tried out Puttshack, and it was really cool! We all enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a 9 round putt-putt round which had some really fun holes on it. There was trivia, bonus points on the holes, and even ways to lose points on the holes. We had a lot of fun with this one. Ryan ended up being the big winner of the night! After this, we grabbed dinner at their restaurant, and were pleased with how tasty it was. We can't wait to go back!
Day 23: We were looking forward to being in pajamas all day. We started the morning with watching the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special; it was a fun one. After that we watched the premier of Glass Onion which was a great murder mystery movie. This was a wonderfully relaxing day!
Day 24: We started out the day by having Granna, Papa, Wayne, McKayla, Molly, and Zac over for brunch. This is always a fun and really delicious time together!
I'm so thankful for these two.
Our actual countdown activity of the day was attending the church's Christmas Eve service this evening. It was a beautiful service. We are very thankful for First Baptist Smyrna and the people in it. My favorite part of this evening is singing by candlelight at the end of the service. Absolutely beautiful and a wonderful reminder again of the Lord's coming.
This was another wonderful year counting down towards Christmas!
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