Christmas 2023

 What a wonderful Christmas Day we enjoyed! We all got up at 8, we started the oven for cinnamon rolls, and got ready to celebrate. I love our beautiful tree, and it's always fun to see lots of presents underneath it.

The stockings were stuffed, even Decker's!

Santa stopped by and left some very nice gifts. Both girls received a record player and five vinyl records. There was a grab bag of candy for us all to share; it included several fun sodas and lots of yummy candies. There were two family gifts in envelopes too. One was for all four of us to go see Cirque du Soleil's Echo show later in the week. The other was for the three girls to go back to Amanda Duessalt for her House of Colour styling. These family gifts always have something fun in them!

The Grinch greeted the girls as they came out of their rooms. I couldn't possibly love this any more.

Lily opened up the family grab bag so we could all see the goodies inside.

Mia then opened Decker's stocking for him. He seemed pretty excited to get a new starfish toy along with a candy cane full of different jerkies.

We took a little break to enjoy cinnamon rolls, and then we opened up our stockings. There are so many fun little items in those stockings! Then we moved on to taking turns opening presents from one another. I took very few pictures during all of this. It was so great to simply enjoy being in the moment instead of watching through my phone camera. I love my family and our time together.

I did bring my camera out at the end though because we had a bigger surprise gift for each girl, and I was able to capture the surprise and joy when opening these gifts. Mia was thrilled to open up the Meta Quest 3 virtual reality set. These are so cool, and she's going to have lots of fun with it!

This was Lily's gift. It doesn't look like much.

When you pull the tree up though, you just keep pulling out slips with money in it. This was quite a welcome surprise for her!

After all gifts were opened, the girls were ready to enjoy their new record players. They had fun learning how these work and hearing how a vinyl sounds different than streaming. Each girl received two Taylor Swift albums (Lover and Speak Now for Lily, Midnights and 1989 for Mia), one other current pop star they like (Olivia Rodrigo for Lily, Conan Gray for Mia), their favorite musical (Wicked for Lily, Beetlejuice for Mia), and a classic album (Abbey Road for Lily, Thriller for Mia). It was so cool to hear!

We cleaned up a bit, Granna and Papa stopped by to see all the goodies, and then we had a relaxing afternoon. It was such a lovely day.

Eventually dinnertime rolled around, and we made a little feast. Ryan perfectly grilled up two Wagyu New York Strips for us. I made some sweet potato bites; we also had some buttered sweet peas, honeycrisp apples, and French bread with oil and vinegar. We celebrated with beautiful red sparkling cranberry apple juice too. This was an absolutely delicious meal!

This day couldn't have been any more perfect. We celebrated the birth of our Savior. Good food was enjoyed, and great memories were made with my favorite people. What a fantastic Christmas!

Christmas Countdown 2023

I love our Christmas countdown tradition. There was a lot to juggle around this year, and some items ended up getting delayed, but that's ok. It's still a lot of fun!

We bought a countdown calendar for Decker to have this Christmas season. He seemed to enjoy getting a little sweet potato bite each day!

We bought a Grinch calendar for the family. It had tiny figures and such in it which were fun to see each day. We created a whole little village from it.

Here are the fun things we did during our countdown this year:

Day 1 - Ryan read the nativity story from Luke 2 to us. It's great to start out the season by remembering why we celebrate Christmas.

Day 2 - Cozy start to Christmas. Mia received a new super soft bathrobe while Lily received a Grinch onesie blanket.

Day 3 - We gave Decker a new toy because he's such a good boy! The toy is a stuffed pheasant, and he absolutely loves it!

Day 4 - The girls gave of their funds to charitable organizations. Lily gave to the Lottie Moon offering at our church while Mia chose to give baby chicks through Samaritan's Purse.

Day 5 - We stuffed, sealed, and stamped our Christmas cards to get them in the mail.

Day 6 - This was an incredibly busy day, so we each took a few seconds to tell our favorite wintertime joke. Lily's friend, Lauren Martin, was over, and we agreed her joke was the best:

Day 7 - Our family enjoyed a nice dinner out together. We went to Marcel which is a French steakhouse, and it was absolutely delicious!

Day 8 - We had an inflatable reindeer ring toss tournament. Lily won and was awarded a McDonald's gift card as her spoils.

Day 9 - We put together a "this or that" day which is so much fun. We knew we were heading down to the Buckhead Christmas Market, so option 1 was picking lunch while there.

We made a slight tweak when we actually saw the food options. The girls and I had crepes while Ryan enjoyed a pretzel.

Option 2 was stopping by Target for either an ugly sweater or a cozy item; cozy won, and the girls each got some cute new socks. Option 3 was stopping by PetSmart or Whole Dog Market for a Christmas present for Decker; Whole Dog was the winner, and we got him a cute little toy squirrel. Option 4 was going by RaceTrac or QT for a treat; RaceTrac was the winner. What a fun day!

Day 10 - Annie at the Fox with our Broadway across Atlanta tickets. Such a great show!

Day 11 - A fun new family game for the Switch. We ended up not having time for this today, but Ryan and Mia played later on. It was a cute little game.

Day 12 - Axe Throwing tournament on our back porch. Lily won a Publix gift card for coming out on top!

Day 13 - I read The Crippled Lamb to our family; I love this book.

Day 14 - We enjoyed a time of prayer together. We prayed for each other and one other person or group that is dear to us. I love this time together.

Day 15 - We played flip tic tac toe on our dining room table which was some fast-paced fun. Congrats to Mia for winning a Chick-fil-a gift card with some great double-flipping moves!

Day 16 - Bama's Christmas party in Birmingham. It's always nice when the whole family gets together. These 9 kids have fun together, and I think it makes for one very happy Bama!

Day 17 - Brown family Christmas party at Jodi's house. Lots of good food and good times together here. We are very thankful to have such a great extended family.

Day 18 - Family game night where we played a new Taco versus Burrito game. It was pretty fun, and Mia came out on top (though there was no prize for this win).

Day 19 - A delicious and fun treat with Elf breakaway sugar cookies. Yummy!

Day 20 - We went to see Wonka in the movie theater. We all thoroughly enjoyed this movie; it was really delightful!

Day 21 - We loved supporting our friend, Avery Hobson, as the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol. She did a great job in this classic role!

Day 22 - We made cheese fondue at home. It wasn't as good as the Melting Pot, but we sure did enjoy it.

Day 23 - We watched a Christmas movie at home. We settled on the live action version of The Grinch as it's been quite awhile since we've watched it. We all enjoyed it, but agreed we like animated versions better.

Day 24 - We loved getting to spend the evening of Christmas Eve at our church. First Baptist Smyrna has grown near and dear to our hearts, so we were thankful to be here for this lovely service.

What a great countdown to Christmas!