Crafty Christmas Tree

We decided to get crafty this Christmas and do a family craft with hand prints.  This is what we came up with.  Our Family Christmas Tree. Brian started us off at the bottom and Sissy ended us up at the top.  We painted a wooden star with glitter paint and added red buttons of various sizes for the ornaments.  I thought it turned it out super cute...but I'm partial. :)  Merry Crafty Christmas!

Christmas Morning Highlights 2010

Christmas Morning 2010

Christmas morning was extremely exciting for us this year. This was the first year that we spent the night in our own home and woke up to see what Santa brought us. We usually spend the night at Granna's house but decided this year, we needed to start our own tradition with the kids.

Brian and I stayed up until 1am putting toys together so when Peyton came in at 4am to wake us up, we told him to go back to sleep. He had only woken up because his tummy was hurting. He ended up grabbing a blanket and slept beside our bed. The whole house was asleep until about 8. Now that's more like it!

Christmas Eve 2010

The kids and I made gingerbread cutout cookies this year and we even decorated them. It was a lot of fun...I've never had much success with frosting cookies but this year I made my own frosting and that really made all the difference in the world. Confectioners sugar icing to so much easier to work with than any other I've tried. Since Makenna is really into Mickey and Minnie Mouse this year, we did mouse cutouts and stars. The kids had a great time cutting out the designs and frosting them. They were also very excited about getting Santa's plate ready for his upcoming visit.

Christmas Morning

Well...Santa not only ate his cookies, but he answered Peyton's question! He wears the red suit because it's flame retardant! Hello??? That makes sense right? Why didn't I think of that when Peyton asked? :)
In any case, we had a great time with the kids. They were surprised and got many neat and fun new toys.
By the way, we had lobster, steak, and shrimp for dinner. :)

Christmas Eve with Grandpa and Granna

We had a wonderful potato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for Christmas Eve dinner at Grandpa and Granna's house.
After dinner, the kid's got dressed in their new jammies and then we sat by the tree and read "Twas the Night before Christmas". We purchased the book this year and I was very excited about it. It was illustrated by Mary Englebreit and was just beautiful. Anyway...we also read the Christmas Story from Luke.
This year, along with the traditional cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer (Peyton insisted on leaving 9 this time...1 for each reindeer) Peyton colored Santa a picture and also wrote Santa a letter asking him why he always wears a red suit. It was supper cute. He said, "momma, if all of the carrots and cookies are gone, then I'll believe that Santa is real." This validated my suspicions...I had been wondering if he still believed. I sure hoped that the plate would be empty.

Back up to Christmas Eve (I'm seriously behind in posting)

I got off work at 1:15 on Christmas Eve and was able to come home and enjoy the afternoon with my family. We opened Christmas gifts and then packed for mom and dad's house. Traditionally, we spend the evening and night at their house so that we can all wake up together on Christmas day. Here's some pictures of the afternoon.

Christmas with Denise

Denise, Drew, and Charlie invited us down to Greenwood for some good food and fun to celebrate Christmas. It was a great chance to catch up. Denise and Drew used to be our neighbors but moved to Greenwood and we miss them terribly! Charlie built a beautiful home and it's always fun to go down and spend time at his house as well as on the farm that his family owns. It's about a 45 minute drive and the kids were flat worn out....as you can tell!

Festival of Trees

We shot downtown Saturday afternoon to see the festival of trees and do some street shopping. We went to a great new(er) shop called The Lollipop Shoppe and of course to the Life is Good store. It was a beautiful day and it felt great to get the kids outside and get some fresh air.

Peyton with his favorite tree. A tree decorated with fabric candy. Makenna's here with her favorite tree...one decorated with various ducks. (quack, quack!)

There were so many fun and whimsical, clever, and beautiful trees. Great job Greenville!

Live Nativity

One of the local stables hosted a live nativity and hay ride this. It was super cold and they served hot chocolate while we watch the nativity. The owner told the story of Mary and Joseph and they had animals walking everywhere and gave us the opportunity to pet them. As much as Makenna is in to farm animals, she wasn't very keen on petting any sheep or goats. The stable also "dressed up" a horse to look like a camel. It was quite comical to say the least. After the show, we loaded up and took a hayride around the property. It was a fun afternoon treat with the kids and biblically educational too!

Tree Trimming

Makenna kept asking for my dad all through lunch on Sunday, "pa-paw outside?". So I called and invited him over. I knew that he would be by himself that afternoon since mom had to work and the more the merrier when tree decorating right?

Makenna was so cute putting the ornaments on the tree. Now if we can just get her to LEAVE them on! She's all about the tree. I don't dare wrap any presents and put them under until closer to Christmas. I can only image the damage she would do to the gifts!

We had a good time making cookies, and listening to Christmas music despite the spat that Brian and I had regarding the lights. He's being a bit of a bah humbug this year but the season is early...hopefully he'll snap out of it!

**Notice on the 2nd picture how those 4 ornaments on the bottom are all grouped together. :)**