Other December Fun

We had some other fun during December!

We used these as part of our countdown this year. Ryan and I loved the Bonne Maman jam calendar a few years ago, so we tried it again this year. There were some good flavors in it which we enjoyed on toast or English Muffins. Our whole family enjoyed the Sugarfina calendar. Each day there were four little candies inside for us to try. This one was a lot of fun for all of us!

I finally broke down after about a decade and bought the adorable little wooden reindeer from Love Street! Look how incredibly cute they are sitting on our front walkway. Ryan surprised me with a fifth little one for Decker!

We are so thankful for weekly small group! We decided to switch it up one evening for a murder mystery dinner instead of study. It was a ton of fun (though Charles and Katie were definitely missed!). We had good food and a lot of laughs. We were all surprised to learn that Adam was the one who killed Mrs. Claus!

We gave Ryan an outdoor pizza oven for his birthday. We haven't used it yet, so we were excited to put it to the test one evening. It turned out so incredibly good! We can't wait to use this again!

Ryan and Lily took one morning to drive to Buc-cee's. Lily was quite excited to get this Christmas Buccee outfit, and she wears it often. How adorable is she in it?!

Mia has been sewing up a storm, and I can't help but take pictures each time. I've previously put in her pin cushion and the Tennessee pillow she made for Granna. Look at these cuties! She made this elephant for Bama, this penguin for Josie, the dinosaur for herself, the frog for Emma, the duck for a JTF friend, the Alabama pillow for Brynn, and the Braves pillow for Lindsey. They all turned out so cute!

Mom and I spent part of a Sunday afternoon together with a visit to the Governor's Mansion. It was a lot of fun! The mansion is decorated so pretty for Christmas right now, and we had a great time walking through to see a lot of the house.

Ryan, Lily, and I went to see Avery Hobson in a production of Chicago Teen. They were incredible; we were blown away! This was a ton of fun. In this picture, Avery is on the far left in the front.

This girl loves her Decker.

It's always fun when one of our daughters wants to cuddle!

The World Cup final between Argentina and France in Qatar was playing while we were driving home from Birmingham. When we saw that it was going into penalty kicks we pulled over into a Publix parking lot somewhere off I-20. Ryan pulled the game up on YouTube tv, and we watched Argentina win it all! It was such an exciting end, and I'm so glad we got to see it!

I placed a Goldbelly order from Over the Rainbow Cakes in Miami to take with us to the Brown family gathering. It looked so pretty, and was perfect for a Christmas gathering. The chocolate cake was delicious, and I loved the icing between the layers as it had a white, green, and red checkerboard pattern to it. This was a fun one!

The high school at Stonehaven has a progressive dinner each Christmas. Lily had a lot of fun with her friends. This is such a great class!

We stopped for some chocolates and macarons at a cute little French bakery after our evening at Puttshack. These were really tasty!

Granna took Lily, Mia, and me out a couple of days after Christmas. We all enjoyed lunch at the Grand Lux Cafe at Phipps (look at Mia's pretty drink!). We are always thankful for some girl time!

The ladies Bible Study from school met for a Christmas breakfast at Doceur d'France one morning. This is a great group of ladies to study with and learn from.

It's been a very busy but fun month!

Christmas!

Christmas Day finally arrived! Our tree looked beautiful with all its travel ornaments on it. This year's new ornaments for our family included: an orb from the Atlantis Aquarium, a Phantom mask, Peggy's Lighthouse, Maine lobster sketched on wood, leaves from Acadia National, and a Stranger Things Demigorg. I love our tree!

Stockings were stuffed and ready for the morning.

It appears Santa left a couple of gifts for the girls to enjoy! Lily received a gift card tree with cards to some of her favorite places: Target, QT, Zaxby's, Chick-fil-a, Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and just a regular Visa one to enjoy. Mia received a sherpa fleece blanket with 16 shows on it; all ones she has seen or been a part of! Both girls also received a blind date with a book package which they were excited about. In the middle was a big bag of surprise candy from Rocket Fizz; we liked the Charlie Brown Christmas design on it. There was also a magic box in the middle; the girls can share this by leaving it hanging in the shower so they can put their phones in to easily enjoy music while there. They each had a "family fun pack" to open. Mia opened one telling her our family was going to the Harry Potter Exhibit in town later on in the week. Lily opened one telling her our family is going to see Riverdance at the Fox Theater in January. This was a great way to start the morning!

Decker was pretty excited about the "Starpups" stuffed cup of coffee that was in his stocking. He had fun trying to destroy it as quickly as possible.

Just a few pictures from the morning:

Ryan loved the "I miss Uranus" Holey Moley mug that Lily got him!

I absolutely love this gift from Ryan! We have used this little hand drawn heart picture for a couple of years. One of us would hide it away for the other to find, and then we'd switch. It was always a sweet reminder of our love for each other when we'd find it. I love this little heart card. Ryan had it framed and we hung it up outside our room to keep it from getting damaged or lost along the way. I could not love this gift anymore.

Our afternoon was lazy and restful which was wonderful. Granna and Papa stopped by to visit in the afternoon which was great. Mia enjoyed a big mug of hot chocolate and Lily had fun putting together her new Lego set of succulents. It was an absolutely perfect day.

We were excited about a special Christmas dinner. Look at these amazing Wagyu steaks Ryan grilled for us!

Every bite of dinner was delicious. Wagyu steaks, green beans, mashed potatoes, cinnamon apples, crispy Italian bread, and sparkling cider to drink. This was fantastic!

We ended the meal with one of our family's favorite desserts. It's an easy combo of orange sherbet and strawberry jello with whipped cream on top. It's so good!

We couldn't have asked for a better Christmas day!

Christmas Countdown 2022

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!