Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

Christmas Eve started out with Figgy making her final appearance before heading back to the North Pole for the year.

We went to service at Hope Church and itv was just amazing and so beautiful!

Then it was time to get ready to party. After doing the same thing for the last 34 years, we switched it up a bit and hosted a Christmas gathering for my moms side on Christmas Eve. We ate, laughed, and played poker :) The kids exchanged gifts and the adults played Dirty Santa. It was nice to be in our own house and get the kids to bed at a decent time. 

My cookie platter

The tree is all decorated and the floor is covered with gifts!

Carol Hannah and Sally watch cousins open gifts. 

After all the festivities were over, we changed the girls into matching pajamas and put them into our bed to watch a movie while the grown ups played poker. 

We had to get the obligatory family picture. Hard to believe next year there will be a little baby in it!

After everyone left, we took Sally outside to sprinkle her reindeer food on the front lawn. 

We set out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. We also left our letter. Sally was so excited!! She was like "We have to go to bed! Santa is coming!!"

We read The Night Before Christmas and she was out like a light. Joe and I got to work setting everything up.

We crawled into bed and watched Christmas Story. We had horrible storms in the middle of the night and lost power at 2 am. It was still out at 9am when we woke up so we told Sally that one of the reindeer must have flown into the wires. We convinced her that it was just too dark to see her presents and maybe we should go to Poppy's house and do presents there first. She agreed and so we headed over to my dads to exchange gifts over there and make breakfast.

Around 11 am we came back to our house and the power was back on. Yay! She was so excited when she walked in and saw all her gifts from Santa. She was happy to just stop there but we told her she had a stocking and lots of presents to open. 

She started with her stocking and pulled out each item with such excitement!

Then she opened her Pony Surprise and found 3 baby ponies inside. 

We spent the rest of the day opening gifts, playing and just relaxing. It was SO nice not to have to rush anywhere. 

Joe got his viking jersey that he has been wanting. I also got him a Yeti cup, Viking t-shirt, Grizzles sweatshirt, cologne, tickets to Billy Joel, a few books, running shorts, etc.

Joe got me some vintage christmas ornaments and elves, bath bombs, new address book...but my favorite was my new turn table with some of the best music ever made...now I just need to get all the Beatles albums from my dads house. 

Sally also got a HUGE kinder egg that Joe picked up in Canada a few weeks ago.

We had the best Christmas season and its not over yet, we head to Minnesota in the morning to celebrate with Joe's parents. 

Merry Christmas Y'all!!

Christmas Happenings

December has been a month full of excitement, fun activities and celebrating the season with the ones I love best. Here is a look back at some of the festive things we did. 

We started our advent calendar. I had been collecting little gifts to put in each day for the past year :)

We decorated the house and put up the trees. 

Our elf "Figgy" has been back and up to her usual antics. We welcomed her back with a North Pole Breakfast. 

 I took the easy route and recreated many of the things from last year.

We attended Alpine Village and the girls had a blast!

Mommy and Daddy had a date night to see The Nutcracker and eat dinner downtown with our sweet friend, Jason and Beth.

We attend the Germantown Christmas Parade for the first time. Sally loved the floats and especially loved the ones that threw candy!

We went to Zoo Lights again this year. Sally loved riding the carousel, the Polar Express train and of course seeing all the lights. 

We decorated Gingerbread Houses with the cousins again this year and they had so much fun!

I went to my MOPS table Christmas brunch.

We drove through Starry Nights at Shelby Farms.

We made reindeer food and dressed in some cute Christmas clothes!

We took an overnight trip to Nashville. We went to some of our favorite Nashville restaurants, stocked up at Trader Joes, visited the American Girl store and did ICE! at the Opryland Hotel.

We visited the free Bass Pro Santa for the 4th year in a row. 

As usual, I squeezed a ton into a short amount of time and still had many items on my to-do list but everyone had so much fun!