The Christmas Countdown Tradition Continues

I love our Christmas Countdown tradition!  This is our fourth year in a row.  I always have so much fun planning the days out, and the girls can't wait to find out what the surprise is each day.  The last three years we have used a cute little red stocking as our calendar, but we found this one at our church's bookstore, and we all four loved it, so this has become our new calendar.

I usually only put one picture from each day's event on this blog post.  This year though life has been unusually busy, so some days I have added a couple pictures instead.

Day 1: Decorate the house.  We put up our tree, the girls' tree, three nativity scenes, window clings and fireplace snowmen.  Our family tree is always decorated with ornaments from our travels which I love.  It's so much fun to pull out the ornaments each year and reminisce on the fun we've had.  This picture shows our four from this year: the drum from North Africa, panda from China, chocolate bar from Hershey's and ball from Sesame Place.

 Day 2: Make stick puppets and put on a show.

 Day 3: Make stain glass ornaments.

 Day 4: Roast marshmallows for s'mores.

 Day 5: Pick items from the World Vision catalog to help someone around the world.  Lily selected sending a family five ducks while Mia selected giving a lady a sewing kit so she can sew clothing for her family or to sell.

 Day 6: Make gingerbread houses.  We had much better success this year as we bought completely preassembled houses from Michael's.  We just added the frosting and candy.  For the record, I helped Mia with her door, but she did most everything else herself.  Lily did the entire house by herself.  It was lots of fun!

 Day 7: Movie theatre day!  We went to see Frozen at Atlantic Station, enjoyed lunch at Which 'Wich and then admired the big tree.

 Day 8: Fingerprint painting.  Messy but so fun!

 Day 9: Dinner from the North Pole.  Grilled cheese Rudolph sandwiches, reindeer snacks (carrots and hummus), tree jello and Santa hats (banana, strawberry and mini marshmallow).  To drink we enjoyed a strawberry smoothie with snow cream on top.  Yummy!

 Day 10: ACCA Christmas program.  Unfortunately, Lily was diagnosed with strep throat earlier that day so we not able to participate.  I hope to put up a whole post on this evening though because it was so precious.

 Day 11: New books!  Mia received "God Gave Us Christmas" while Lily received "The Crippled Lamb."  These are two of my favorite Christmas books.

 Day 12: Coloring some Christmas pages.

 Day 13: The Nutcracker in Chattanooga.  Our friend, Kaitlyn, was one of the clowns with Mother Ginger in the performance, so we went up to watch her.  She did a great job!

 Day 14: Disney Live at CEPAC.  This was a princess and pirate show, so the girls loved it.  It was starring Princess Sophia and Jake and his pirate crew.  It was so much fun!

 Day 15: Hand and footprint painting.  Lily made the angel while Mia made the manger.  Lily's thumb made the baby's clothing, and Mia's thumb made his head.  As I noted on Facebook, this picture may not be perfect, but the baby in it didn't come for the perfect people!

 Day 16: A trip to Lenox to ride the Pink Pig and see Santa.

 Day 17: Telling Christmas jokes.  Some our favorites: What says "oh, oh, oh?" (Santa walking backwards) and What's an ig? (an Eskimo house without the loo - these jokes were from a British website!).

 Day 18: Dinner with Annie, Eric and Lucy Worrell.  Annie was Lily's Pre K and Kindergarten teacher.  We absolutely adore her and her family!  She is now a stay at home mommy to Lucy, so had a little get together to catch up.  What a fun evening!

 Day 19: Game night.  We all had fun playing Blokus and then some tickle time!

 Day 20: Movie Night at home.  We enjoyed watching the newest VeggieTales movie staring Merry Larry.  We all savored hot chocolate or apple cider too.

 Day 21: Milkshakes at Steak and Shake after Lily's piano recital.

 Day 22: Meme's Christmas Party.  Meme surrounded by her great-grandchildren.  We are so blessed to have Meme as the head of our family.

 Day 23: Making Christmas cookies.  Lily made Nutella Peanut Butter, and Mia made a Sugar Citrus.  Both were delicious.

 Day 24: All sorts of Christmas Eve fun!  We started by delivering the cookies to our local fire station and to four of our neighbors.  Both girls had mentioned wanting to be kind to our neighbors, so we took them some of the cookies we had made.  Everyone was so appreciative, and the girls were really excited to show generosity to people living nearby.

 Dinner included Christmas pizza in the shapes of gingerbread men, stockings, bells and snowmen!

 Next up was getting on new pajamas.

 Now it's time to hang the stockings.

 Can't forget the cookies and milk for Santa.

 Or the carrots and water for the reindeer.

 Notes left by the cookies for Santa saying thank you.

 All the presents are under the tree, and it was time for bed.  The girls spent the night in our room again this year as we all anxiously awaited for Santa to come by.

I love our Christmas countdown!



Mia's Recital

Last week Mia had her mid year recital last week.  She absolutely loves her combination gymnastics, tap and ballet class that she takes each week at The Little Gym.  It is so fun to watch her have such a great time!

They started with gymnastics.  Look at the big smile on her face as they galloped all around the big red mat! 

 Mia was very proud of her arabesque on the balance beam; she said this was her favorite part.  I loved watching her flip over the uneven bars too.

 We moved over to tap next.  She was so cute intently watching Miss Morgan and tapping along.

 Next up was ballet.  This is when I remembered her ballet shoes are too small, and we need to buy new ones.  We went without shoes :-)

 My sweet little ballerina.

 Mia loves this class so much, and it's been so cool to see her skills improve over the last few months.  We're so glad there is a Little Gym near us!



Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope you and your family were able to count your blessings and celebrate.  We typically celebrate at my cousin's house, but we decided on something a little different this year; Thanksgiving at the beach!  We didn't go in October like normal, so we decided to go over Thanksgiving instead.  It was wonderful!  We started out in Birmingham where Ryan and I went to the Alabama concert; that was a lot of fun.  The next morning we visited with Kendall, John and their precious new baby girl; Josh, Amy and Liz joined us too so it was nice to have the whole family together.  After some time with them, we headed down to the condo.

 

We decided we needed to decorate like we would back home, so we put up window clings all around.

 We decided to eat out a couple of times instead of eating in each day.  One of our favorites was Lamberts.  The girls had never been before, and they were very excited to catch a roll.

 We also enjoyed a yummy meal at The Hangout.

 This is in simply because I love the girls wearing clothes about loving Mommy and Daddy.

We made lots of craft projects this week.  Here are a few of them.

 We also spent a little time at Fort Morgan which was interesting.  Unfortunately, it was REALLY cold, so we didn't stay out too long.  We enjoyed walking though the museum though.

 We made it out to the beach a couple of times, but it was pretty chilly.  The first time, we only stayed for about 15 minutes because it was so cold.  The second time, Kendall, John and Caroline were with us; they were in the area visiting John's family, so they met us for lunch and then came back to introduce Caroline to the beach.  That was a much nicer day, so we spent about 45 minutes or so out.  The girls had fun running around and digging.  Since we couldn't go to the beach as much, we hit the indoor pool a couple of times which the girls loved.  It was a great way to burn some energy!

 We always enjoy reading lots of books together.

 The girls were excited about their light up bracelets!

 Of course, we ate in for Thanksgiving dinner.  We kept it low key so it wouldn't be a stressful time.  The menu included Honeybaked Ham and Turkey, corn soufflé, lemon green beans, cheesy mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, rolls, orange wedges and apple slices.  It was delicious!

 Of course we enjoyed some beautiful views.

One of the beautiful sunsets we enjoyed too.

This was such a wonderful week of much needed family time.  I am so thankful for my family!

Picture from North Africa

Is this not an amazingly gorgeous picture?  On Ryan's recent trip to North Africa, they had one sight-seeing day where they visited several interesting sites and cities.  This was by far my favorite picture though.  This is a coffee shop looking over the Mediterranean.  Wouldn't you love to just sit here and stare for hours?