A Cold but Nice January

Here we are in the new year! We've all gotten back into the routine of work and school. The girls have started back with mock trial practice. Both girls auditioned and have been cast in Brylliant's spring production of Mean Girls, so rehearsals have just started for that. We've had some other fun during the month too. Here's some of the pictures from along the way.

Mia painted this beautiful picture in her school art class. It immediately takes me back to Hawaii. We stood on this ledge, and I love that it inspired her.

I may have gotten a little excited when Goldbelly ran a sale recently. I'm always happy to order the Wagyu steak when it's on sale, but this was a great opportunity to try some new places too. I can't wait to enjoy these yummies!

Ryan planned the most fun surprise date for me one evening! We always love the "this or that" activities with the girls, and he planned a Friday evening where I got to pick all the items for us. First up was dinner. I was super excited to pick a new restaurant, K-Pot. It's a Korean BBQ and Hot Pot spot. It was so much fun! I've done both of these while traveling in China before, but Ryan had not yet tried either. It's an all-you-can-eat menu, so we ordered several different proteins, noodles, and veggies to try. I used a regular miso soup base for my hot pot while Ryan had a spicy Thai Tom yum sauce. After dinner, I picked a card that said "1 new book at Barnes & Noble" which made me quite happy. In the parking lot, he gave me the option to pick the other card instead. That's not usually part of the game, so I was confident he was sure I'd like the other card better. I switched it out, and he was right; it said "2 new books at Barnes & Noble!" I always love exploring the bookstore, and I got two great new books (Night Road by Kristin Hannah and The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer). Next up was dessert, and I was very happy to pick Great American Cookie Company. I ended by picking "read a book by the fire," but I switched it for the other option of "watch a show or movie together." I was having too much fun with Ryan and wanted to keep spending time together! We started the series "All the Light We Cannot See," and it was really good. What a fun evening of adventures for us!

Lily bought this hat on Amazon, and I truly love it. It says "This actually is my first rodeo," and I think it's fantastic.

Our family loves our season tickets to the Broadway Across Atlanta shows at the Fox. We were excited to learn that Aladdin was coming too. Mia was at the JTF competition that weekend, so Ryan, Lily, and I went and were happy to bring Lauren Martin with us too. How perfect to have Morroco-based Aladdin at the Fox! The genie absolutely stole the show.

Mia always loves going to the JTF competition with Brylliant. The studio decided to go with Shrek Jr, and Mia was thrilled to be chosen as Donkey. She was incredible in the show they recently performed, so we weren't surprised at all that they chose her to continue this part. The kids spend about 3 weeks getting ready for JTF. It's certainly similar to the full production, but they have to condense the story down to 15 minutes; they perform a lot of the same music, but they have a lot of new choreography to go with it. It's a lot of hard work to prepare for this, but it culminates in a very fun weekend. A couple of days before the production, Brylliant has a dress rehearsal night for the parents to come and watch. We were absolutely blown away! These kids did such an amazing job! I was so proud of each one of them (but especially Mia).

Their hard work paid off! I'm so glad they won an award for their ensemble. This group was fantastic!

The downside to JTF is that Mia picked up Covid while she was there. She was diagnosed on Monday (a holiday so no school) and was told to quarantine through Friday. She didn't feel well for several days, but turned a corner on Thursday. We were thankful that school was actually cancelled on Tuesday. It was ridiculously cold around here for about 36 hours temps never rose above 25 degrees. Schools were cancelled to avoid any potential ice on the road and to make sure they could be properly heated. The girls didn't mind an extra day off! We were glad this meant Mia only ended up missing 3 days of school that she had to make up.

Even though she was done with quarantine by Saturday, she decided to stay home and sleep while the other three of us drove down to Fayetteville to eat at Truett's Luau. Lily had gone with the volleyball team this fall, and it's been a place I've always wanted to try. A Hawaiian themed Chick-fil-a adjacent restaurant? Yes please! We all ordered a Frozen Hawaiian drink which was delicious and came in a fun tiki glass. Ryan tried their Hawaiian burger (yep, this Chick-fil-a serves burgers!), Lily had a breakfast bowl with nuggets, and I tried their tacos made with grilled nuggets, spicy sauce, and pineapple coleslaw. We all split their Hawaiian nuggets because we wanted to try them. They were delicious! This was a fun little outing.

What a great January it's been!

End of 2023

In addition to Christmas, our Christmas countdown, and Shrek, we had a lot of other fun December activities going on. It was a busy, but wonderful, month!

I gave Ryan tickets to see Sarah Brightman in concert at Symphony Hall. She is an icon, and this performance was beyond incredible. This has become a top five concert for both of us, hands-down. She sang so many beautiful Christmas songs, and it was truly lovely. At one point, while she was offstage changing dresses, the orchestra started playing Masquerade which is a gorgeous song, and we recognized it as a nod to her originating Christine in Phantom. Suddenly though they changed to play Phantom of the Opera, and she came out to sing. It was amazing! We couldn't believe we'd just heard the first Christine sing Phantom!

Ryan and I also went down to State Farm Arena to see Nate Bargatze in his stand-up comedy show. He was hilarious! He's our age, so he has the right combination of humor and relatability. He had three opening acts too. One of them was his father, a magician/comedian, and he was wonderful too. This was a night filled with laughs which we needed.

Lily was excited for her class annual Yule Fest which is a progressive dinner.

The class started out at the Johnson's house for salad and soups, and then they headed over to our house for the entree. Ryan grilled up a ton of New York strip steaks, and they were delicious. I made roasted butter garlic carrots, lemon almond green beans, and mashed potatoes with butter, sour cream, cheese, and bacon toppings. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal, and we loved having all the kids over.

Such a handsome group of young men.

Such a beautiful group of young ladies (though Avery was missed!).

When they left our house, they headed over to the Wilkinsons for dessert. We are so thankful for this group!

One of the parent drivers took this picture of Ryan and me, and I liked it.

Lily and I continued our tradition of going to see her friend, Katie Brooks, in The Nutcracker. She did a great job!

There was a beautiful night during Christmas break one evening, so we enjoyed a great firepit together. I always love these evenings.

I successfully completed my Smyrna Safe Business course. My classmates and I were recognized at a city council meeting which was pretty cool!

The school changed the date for the Christmas program, and it fell on the same night as the Sarah Brightman concert which meant Ryan and I couldn't attend. We snapped this picture of the girls and Lauren Martin before they left. I hate that we missed it, but we definitely saw an incredible show that evening.

Lily made this cute little Target sugar cookie set as a Christmas decoration. How fun is this?!

These three. They've been in school together since Pre-K, and they have such a special bond with one another. I love this little group. Lily and Nate were happy to support Avery as Shrek.

I absolutely adore this delightful smelling Christmas mix! Bama gave us this, and it totally brightened up the Christmas smells.

We love having Granna, Papa, Wayne, and his family over for brunch on Christmas Eve. McKayla and Bennett were with Bennett's family this year, so we missed seeing them. I am thankful for our family.

We were all excited to head downtown to see Cirque du Soleil's performance of Echo a few days after Christmas. These are always so cool! This one was no exception.

We've enjoyed a lot of rest and downtime in this last week of the year which has been absolutely lovely. We know "the real world" is coming back quickly!

This has been a wonderful month, and really, it was a great cap to a wonderful year. Our family recognizes how blessed we are. We have many incredible opportunities and experiences throughout the year. We are thankful for each one of them. Most of all, we are thankful for a God who loves us so much that He sent His son to live a perfect life, take the penalty for our sins, and then rise from the grave to conquer death for us. We pray that we can honor God with our lives throughout the upcoming year. We look forward to all that is to come in 2024!

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!