Go Tell It On The Mountain

Each year, our church has a "Hanging of the Greens" service to finalize the Christmas decorations and light the tree. Abigail wanted to sing a solo at the service, and we convinced A.J. to help her out. It is very cute. I bet you watch it more than once!

Family Traditions

I am very fond of family traditions. As a matter of fact, next week at work, I am doing a presentation for families on CHRISTmas Traditions. I am very excited to be teaching the mothers I work with about the importance of Christ in the holidays. This year, in our family, we are using the devotions and some of the activities from the book The ADVENTure of Christmas. For the first devotion, we read about the meaning behind Christmas trees.

When I was growing up, my mom always gave us a new ornament each year. The ornament would symbolize something about our year or an interest we had during that time in our lives. It is a tradition I have passed down to our children. This year, we incorporated it with the reading from our devotion book and gave the kids the ornaments the night we put up the tree and read about Christmas trees.

Here is a video of the kids getting their ornaments:

They get to hang their ornament on the tree before all of the others. I convinced Abigail that her HUGE princess ornament had princesses on it that wanted to see out the window (hence, it is on the back of the tree... I know... I am terrible).

Christmas Time!

Sunday morning, Abigail wanted to wear a Christmas dress to church. She had a new one Nana bought last year, and she was very excited to wear it (not so much about the tights, though). As we were leaving, I realized A.J. had on sweater that matched, so we grabbed the camera. Apparently, Emma (our music minister's daughter) was also in the Christmas mood. Here are the pictures (including some of Abigail being silly).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. You are able to enjoy family, food, and fun, without the stress of gift-buying and hoping everyone is happy with the gifts you did buy! I love this holiday.

This was our year to be with my family, and here are a few pictures from the day. I really am not good at getting pictures of everyone, and I happened to miss Grandma and Pa, as well as Christian. But, they were there, I promise! Thank you Grandma and Pa for opening your home to all of us and hosting a fabulous meal and day... especially the fun of Uno!

Here is Aunt Lesli attempting to read a Thanksgiving book to A.J., Abigail, and Emily. However, I think that proved to be a difficult task. Thanks Aunt Lesli for trying!

I took about a dozen pictures of Emily and Abigail, and this was the best one. It is very hard to get a 2 year old and a 4 year old to smile in unison!

Granddaddy came down from Atlanta for the holiday. We don't get to see him often, but Abigail really gravitated towards him and acted like she sees him daily! He enjoyed playing with his great-granddaughter.

Thanksgiving at A.J.'s School

A.J.'s class had a Thanksgiving party that Abigail and I attended. They made cornucopias by putting trail mix in waffle cones (smart idea, I thought). They also made turkeys out of paper, and when you flipped them over, they were Indians (another cute idea). Here are some pictures from the day.

And yes... Abigail had a performance at her school, too, but this mom forgot her camera! As soon as I get pictures from the director, I will post those, too.

Cupcake Turkeys

As I was making turkeys for A.J.'s class, I was thinking about how it is nice to only work part-time and have time for "mom" things, such as making turkey cupcakes for A.J.'s class. Then, I realized... when I was working full-time, I still did these things, just much later at night! So, here are this year's Thanksgiving treats. We have done Oreo turkeys in the past, but I am currently in a cupcake phase, so we changed it some. And, thank you to my wonderful husband for helping! Don't you just want to eat one????

Merry Christmas... I am already tired!

For those of you who think I plan way too much... stop reading now. The following may hurt your eyes!

I realized our Christmas calendar was already filling up... way too fast. It isn't even Thanksgiving yet, right??? We already have 12 different events to attend. We have several family traditions I was afraid would get left out (building our gingerbread house, delivering sweet treats to elderly church members, etc). I also have a new Advent devotion book I wanted us to read each night and do some activities from. So, here it is... my solution... (this is the part where you un-planning type people quit reading):

I made this calendar and hung it on our back door (which happens to be magnetic). The red are places/events we have to attend for church related activities. The blue is things I have for work. The purple is school related events. The green is our special family projects, and the orange is the devotion we are reading for the day. So, are you impressed or overwhelmed???

I do realize there will be more added as we actually get into December!

And... if you are wondering about the Advent devotion book, it is called An ADVENTurous Christmas by Lisa Whelchel (you know... Blair from Facts of Life). You MUST get it. It is awesome. You can get it on her site (where she will personalize it for you) or Amazon. It is a must have for the Christmas season.