A Brown Christmas

Tuesday evening my Dad's family got together at Jodi and Michael's house. What a fun evening! We all got there about 6PM, and the adults enjoyed catching up over appetizers. The kids were downstairs playing; Lily had fun coloring. Mia was fascinated by the stairs in their house. We have stairs down to our basement, but that's behind a locked door, so she doesn't get to see them very often. As soon as the door would open and she would see the stairs (which was pretty often), she would take off running towards them. Luckily, there were lots of people around who helped us keep an eye on her.

About 7, we ate dinner, and it was fantastic. Fried chicken, turkey and ham were the main dishes and there were tons of side dishes that were all wonderful. My family is filled with awesome cooks! About 8 we headed downstairs. Jodi started out by reading Room For A Little One to the kids; it was a very sweet story. While she was reading, Mia decided she had enough for the day (we were well past bedtime by this point), so Ryan got her pack and play out and put her to bed; she fell right asleep. While he was doing that, we continued downstairs with the tradition of reading the Christmas story. This year, Sophie read it and did a great job. Here's a picture of her sitting in Jodi's lap while she read it.

After reading this, Reed led us in singing several Christmas songs which was fun. Then Meme shared a few words about thankful she is and how special Christmas is. I always love listening to her because she has such a deep understanding of the Bible, and I know she always speaks from her heart. When she finished speaking, it was time for presents. I don't think the kids could have waited much longer! Look how excited Lily was!
Lily was thrilled with her new presents...a Snow White mirror set, healthy food sets for her kitchen and a toy texting phone. She was also excited to help open Mia's gifts...a Little People zoo train, a shape-teaching bug and a talking tea set. It was lots of fun watching all the kids as they were so happy with their great new gifts. Here's a few pictures of Lily opening her and Mia's gifts.

Once the kids opened their gifts, all the adults opened their gifts from Meme, and then we played a White Elephant game which was tons of fun. I ended up with a neat lap desk, and Ryan received a Falcons Tervis Tumbler. We all had a great time stealing and teasing one another. It was a late night (we got home close to 11:30), but it was a great time!

We always have a wonderful time when our family gets together. We are so thankful for each and every one of them. What a wonderful Christmas celebration!

A Tennessee Weekend

What a wonderful weekend! The four of us left Friday at 2 to head to Tennessee to celebrate Christmas with my mom's family in Jefferson City. It was a tough drive; it rained the whole time, the girls didn't sleep well and there was something on I-40 that caused major traffic delays (we eventually bypassed it without seeing what was going on). Thankfully though after 4 hours we made it to Knoxville where we enjoyed a delicious dinner with our friends, Michael and Jenn Douglas. Ryan and Michael have been friends since they were kids, and they talk to one another often; however it had been over two years since we had actually seen them. It was great to catch up with one another. After dinner, we had about 45 minutes to go to my grandmother's house. About half-way there, it started snowing really hard which slowed us down a little more, but we were so excited about the possibility of playing in snow the next day! When we got to Granny's house, we quickly unpacked and got the girls to bed. It took a little while for them to settle down, but they finally did and the adults were not too far behind them.

On Saturday, we woke up to a beautiful blanket of snow; thankfully it wasn't on the roads as we had more family coming in to town. We had a relaxing morning and then after Mia's nap, we bundled the girls up and went outside to play. Mia was happy to run right in though the snow came up to about her knee while Lily was content to stay on the covered patio, make snowballs with my dad and give directions from above us. Finally, we convinced her to come down and play...she loved it. We made a very small snowman, Ryan made a snow angel and we had fun making "holes in the snow" as Lily said; she liked seeing her footprints. Finally, Ryan and I were able to have a snow ball fight too which was lots of fun. After a little while, we decided the girls needed to go back in because we really don't have appropriate clothing for snow, and we didn't want them to get sick. We went back in, warmed up, had lunch and then napped.

 It's a little hard to walk in the snow by myself!

 Mommy and Daddy will help me from now on.

After nap time, we all got ready and went to my uncle and aunt's house; Johnny Wayne and Nancy have a beautiful home up on a mountain so the views outside are amazing. We all loved our traditional Christmas dinner. Cherry glazed pork loin is the main dish, and I look forward to it all year. All the sides were fantastic too...spinach casserole, mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole, lima beans, brown rice and rolls just to make your mouth water. After Italian cream cake dessert, it was time to open presents. Opening presents is so much fun now that we have five little ones (our two girls and my brother's three kids) who love it. The girls were thrilled with their gifts, and Ryan and I are so excited about the David Copperfield show tickets from Granny. By this point, it was well past bed time, so we packed up and headed back to Granny's where we all went to bed pretty quickly.

This morning the girls slept until about 8:45 which was a nice treat. We had a fun morning playing with their new toys, and then about 10:30 headed back to JW and Nancy's for brunch...again delicious! After brunch, Granny surprised the kids with cute little gingerbread man cookies. Lily was really excited about this. She thought it was really cute, and then she realized it was delicious. This was definitely a sweet treat! We enjoyed our time eating together and catching up, and then, unfortunately, it was time for us to go. We packed up our stuff and hit the road. This time it was a very easy trip back as both girls slept over 2 hours of the 3.5 hour trip and then just chilled looking out the window the rest of the way.

I am so thankful to have such wonderful family even though we don't get to see one another nearly enough. It was a treat to get to spend time with them this weekend, and I sure hope it isn't too long before we get to visit again!

Lily's Heart

Lily gets on little kicks where she likes to hear the same Bible story each night for days on end. For about a week now she has been asking to hear about "Just David, not Goliath." She was on a David and Goliath kick before this, so now she wants the story before this which is about Samuel finding Jesse who introduces Samuel to his son, David, and then Samuel anoints David to be the next king. During this story, it tells how God says He does not look at the outside of a person but at the inside of a person, their heart. Each night when we get to this part, Lily looks down her shirt, points to her heart and proudly says "I have my heart in right now Mommy!"

S'more Fun

Ryan had a great idea for tonight - s'mores! It was cold (high-30's), but there was no wind so it was a lovely evening. We waited until Mia went to bed (I was too nervous to have her near the fire), and then Ryan started up the outside fireplace.

Lily watching Ryan getting the fire ready outside.

Showing Lily how to roast a marshmallow. For the first little while she kept saying she was roasting mushrooms which we thought was pretty funny.
Getting the hang of it.

Having a blast!

Showing off her roasted marshmallow.

Admiring her marshmallow. She really liked catching it on fire and then blowing it out with a little help from Ryan or me. At one point she said "It looks like a cupcake!" I guess because of its shape and we recently had cupcakes for Mia's birthday with a candle in.

Trying out a s'more.

Finger licking good!

After roasting several marshmallows and enjoying them, Lily also had fun playing on her playground. The girl loves to swing! Finally it was time to go inside and start getting ready for bed. We got inside and Lily wanted to put a band-aid on because she had accidentally touched the rim of the fireplace which was pretty warm. You couldn't even see a mark on her arm, and she kept pointing to different places on her arm where it touched, so we know she is fine; however, she said a band-aid would make her feel better, so Hello Kitty band-aid it is. After that, she said "That was so much fun!" When I told her I was glad she liked it, she said "Yeah, it was a fun treat. Let's do it again." I asked her what her favorite part of the s'more was: the Meme cracker, the chocolate or the marshmallow. She thought for a second and then said "The marshmallow I think is my favorite. No, the chocolate cookie is my favorite." This was such a wonderful evening. I look forward to doing it again!

The Pink Pig

A fun winter tradition here in Atlanta is for families to go ride The Pink Pig. This little ride has been around since the 1950's. It used to be located on top of the Rich's building in downtown; once that store closed, it moved, retired and came back. It is now located in a huge tent in the Lenox Square parking lot. There are lots of pictures of the original Pink Pig; I can only imagine how cold it must have been to ride that on top of a tall building in December!

Ryan and I took the girls on Tuesday morning; this was our very first time to go. Lily was so excited, especially when I told her how Papa used to ride the Pink Pig when he was a little boy. They even had one of the old Pig cars there, and I told her Papa used to ride in that exact one. This is a very slow-moving little train obviously shaped like a pink pig, and it's named Priscilla. It goes around its track two times, and it tells the story of Priscilla's family who moved to Atlanta a long time ago, and her grandmother was the first Pink Pig, then her mommy was the Pink Pig and Priscilla has always known she wanted to be the Pink Pig. It's a cute little story for kids to hear. Both girls loved it, and I'm so glad we did this! They of course have a little gift shop too, so we bought a Christmas ornament to commemorate our first visit. It will definitely become a tradition for us now! Enjoy our pictures...

The welcome sign.

Lily was so excited as she took in all the scenery while we waited in line.

The ride is getting ready to start. Look how excited she is!
Ryan and Mia were riding in front of us. Mia was too little to turn around and stay seated, so this is only the back of her head. She was a little antsy waiting for the ride to start, but once we started moving, she loved it!

Wonder and amazement. One of the little forests you drive through showed pictures of the original Pink Pig. The one in service now looks much more like a pig train while the original ones look more like a pig car.

Candy Cane Love

After dinner last night, Lily had fun taking all the ornaments off her tree, playing with them and putting them back onto the tree. She brought a few of the candy canes to Ryan who showed her how to make a heart by putting two of them together; Lily thought this was a great trick. She picked them up, walked over to me and said "I show you something neat Mommy!" She put them down into a heart shape and said "I made a heart for you because I love you!" I wanted to just scoop her up, hug her and never let go. Really, can you get any sweeter than that?

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I am happy to say: It's Christmastime! This is a wonderful time of year for kids and adults alike, and I love it. We really start to get into Christmas mode last night by putting up our Christmas tree. Ryan and I brought the tree up from the basement while Lily and Liz looked on. Lily was so excited! We leave our tree lights up on the tree, but it's been a few years since we had restrung them and you could tell, so we spend a little time taking the lights down. We realized a couple of the strands had a lot of lights out, so Ryan went on a mission to find more lights. Even though she was excited, Lily was ready for bed, so we promised her we would finish during the night and she could see it in the morning. Ryan and I love to decorate our tree. Since we collect ornaments from our travels and many ornaments have been given as gifts, it always brings back so many memories to pull each one out and hang it up. Of course, Christmas music was playing too, and it really sets the Christmas mood for us. You can see a picture of our tree below. Do you like that baby gate wrapped around it? We don't Mia to be anywhere near this tree; it would be toppled over in a heartbeat.
After the tree was decorated, we hung our stockings over the fireplace. However, we realized that Mia can easily climb onto the fireplace and then pull them down. This would be awful because we have very heavy stocking holders up; they are not so heavy that she couldn't pull them over, but they are heavy enough to inflict major pain. So, we decided we would let Lily see the stockings in the morning, but then we pulled them up and they are sitting on top of the fireplace instead of hanging down. Hopefully Santa can figure this out. We also put out our nativity scenes. We have two that we love. One was a Hummel set from Ryan's Grandmama, and the other is a hand-carved set my Meme brought back from her trip to the Holy Land. They are both sitting on our buffet where Mia cannot reach them and Lily has been given very stearn warnings not to climb up there and play with them. To help take away that temptation some, we actually bought the girls their own nativity scene to play with. It's part of the Fisher Price Little People set (both girls love Little People), and it's really cute. Lily especially is having fun with it, and Mia is enjoying some of the pieces too. You can see its picture below.

Saturday kept the Christmas mood going. Lily was thrilled to see the tree, nativity scenes (especially the new one) and the stockings when she got up. We woke Mia up and got her ready too because we had very special plans for the morning...a delicious breakfast at The Georgian Club and then a meeting with Santa! We dressed the girls in matching ice blue smocked dresses, and I have to say they looked adorable. Here's our picture which was taken in front of our tree.

The Georgian Club had a nice breakfast buffet set out for all to enjoy. They had cereals, lots of delicious fruits, eggs, pancakes, waffles (with tons of toppings to choose from), potatoes, grits, sausage, bacon and a big juice bar. Lily was very excited that I gave her a small pancake and a small portion of waffle; she loves breakfast food. I also gave her a few M&M's (a waffle topping); I figured she needed to be in an extra good mood to meet Santa. Here's a picture of us getting ready to enjoy breakfast.

Lily was thrilled that they had Rice Krispies. We usually eat Cheerios or Raisin Bran for cereal at home, so this was a definite treat; she ate two bowls and loved it.

Finally it was time to meet the man himself. Lily has been very excited all week. She was telling me all the things she was going to tell Santa she wanted and things Mia wanted. She has talked about "my friend Santa Claus" coming to our house to bring presents and leaving cookies out for him. She has agreed multiple times that to sit on his lap and tell him these things. Care to take a guess what happened when the time came? Exactly...not going to happen. We decided to take a picture of the four of us with him first, and then try to slip out of the picture. Here is the picture Liz took of us and the Club photographer took one too that we should get soon. Both girls did fine while we were holding them. Then Santa sat down, and I told Lily I wanted her to sit on his lap to which she promptly replied "No." Not really surprised by that, I told her that was fine and said I would like for her to stand next to his chair. At this moment, Ryan put Mia in his lap and she started screaming. Lily again said "No" and had a death grip around my neck which let me know I would not easily get her down, so I said "Okay," and I am going to be very happy with a picture of two calm (though not smiling!) kids with us and Santa.

After our meeting with Santa we went back to our table, so Lily could finish her Rice Krispies and Santa had magically placed a gift on our table to the girls. We let Lily open it since Mia really doesn't care about gifts. She was very excited to see a new Cedermont Kids DVD with "Christmas Favorites" on it. She had several times during breakfast to go to the museum after breakfast, but as soon as she opened this DVD, she asked if we could home so we could watch it. That was a fun little treat for her. After we had all finished eating, we walked down the hall and stopped to take this picture of Bama with the girls. You can see Mia was not very happy. By this point, she was so tired because it was coming up on her regular nap time, and we had woken her up early.

We still didn't leave right away though. In one of the side rooms, they had a great craft room for the kids. They had several stations set up to participate in...frost and decorate cookies, making candy cane ornaments (stringing beads), Rudolph ornaments (glue and art supplies) or Christmas tree ornaments (stickers). Surprising to me, Lily didn't want to frost and eat the cookie; it's probably because several kids were already there. She is really getting into making art projects these days though, so she was very excited to make a Rudolph ornament and a Christmas tree ornament. Here's a picture of her holding up the tree she made to Daddy. She put a couple of ornaments on it and wrote her name at the bottom. She then asked me to write Mia across the top (since Mia couldn't write it herself but the ornament was for them to share according to Lily) and then write Mommy, Daddy and Bama on the back (since we were also there).

Bama made tree ornaments for each girl too. Aren't they cute?

Here's a picture of Lily getting ready to help me glue eyes onto Rudolph's Popsicle stick body. She was very excited about using the glue!

Putting the final touches on Rudolph.

When we got home, we took Liz's idea to get the girls their own little tree where they could play with the ornaments. While Mia napped, Ryan took Lily to a few stores to pick a tree and ornaments. On a quick side note, when Mia woke up, she and I had a great time playing together. It's amazing how much easier it is to just watch one child! Anyway, when Lily and Ryan got home, Lily couldn't wait to tell me about their trip, the tree and all the ornaments; she was SO EXCITED. Ryan brought in the little tree and put it up near ours. Lily then told me about the different ornaments that she picked out all by herself (all of which Ryan made certain where non-breakable)...candy canes, green and red jingle bells, clay figures (Santa, Rudolph, snowman and teddy bear) and little bity presents in an array of colors. They were all very cute, and of course, we have the ornaments made earlier in the day too. Here's a picture of Lily decorating the girls' tree. Ryan and I helped her get ornaments at the top too since she can't reach that high. It takes everything in me to not "straighten out" her tree and just let her hang them wherever she wants!

Ryan also bought a few red bows that we tied onto the baby gate to make it look a little more festive. We had one extra so he put that at the top of Lily's tree since it didn't have any kind of a topper. It's really pretty cute. By this point we were up to the girls' naps, so they went down while Ryan and I cleaned up and made some individual white chocolate blueberry cheesecakes; yum! When Mia woke up, she came out and was playing happily until she noticed the little tree. She immediately started pulling off the ornaments. This is when we realized that ornaments from The Dollar Tree aren't the most sturdy. The little presents unwrap pretty easily. It took some effort to distract her so she didn't take the whole tree apart while Lily slept! When Lily came out she went to her tree too; she also started taking the ornaments down and giving them to me, Ryan and Mia. She would give them all out then collect them back and put them up again. She did this many times for the rest of the evening; I guess she found it fun to decorate the tree again and again! By the end of the evening, 11 of the 12 little presents had been open and subsequently thrown away as they couldn't be rewrapped. Lily didn't mind though; she is thrilled with her tree. The last time she decorated it, I told her it was beautiful. She smiled and said "Yeah it is" with such pride in her voice. She's loving it.

So we entered the Christmas season last night and today with a full plate of Christmas trees, decorating, good food, meeting Santa, art projects and seeing out-of-town family. It's going to be a wonderful season!

Thanksgiving Pictures

A quick picture with my parents, my brother's family and us just before we left our Thanksgiving get-together with my family. It was so cold! This was a great day!

I love Mia's big blue eyes!

I think Lily was asleep before we even got out of the neighborhood.

Mia was also exhausted from missing her afternoon nap. She started crying when we got in the car, but within a few minutes, she was knocked out too. I love seeing sleeping babies; they look like little angels.