Kid Trees

Last year, my parents gave a great gift to the kids. She cross-stitched many ornaments each symbolizing a part of Christmas. These ornaments were given to us when I was a kid when we participated in our church's Walk Through Bethehelem "performances". She worked all year long during 2007 to finish them just in time for last year's Christmas season. My dad put them together in ornament hangers and personalized each back with the child's name, the year 2007 and that is was from "Poppa and Mimi". The kids loved decorating their own trees and having their own decorations in their rooms.

This weekend, we finally had a chance to sit down with the kids and let them decorate their trees. They had a blast!!! We had fun talking about the different designs, words and how special these trees were. Each child was very careful and they placed the ornaments on their tree. Even Xander did it without too many problems - the biggest problem was that the cross-stitched side occasionally faced the inside (not the outside) of the tree.

Thanks again, Poppa and Mimi.

Date Night

Now we have quite a crazy schedule, especially when it comes to the month of December. However, last night, we got to plan in a very special date night. We have some great friends who gave us a wonderful gift . . . last Christmas. It was the gift of a certificate to Stoney River coupled with babysitting during our dinner out. What better thing could we ask for?

Well, after at least four months of saying, "We'll do it sometime this month", and never actually getting to it, we finally simply set a date and made it work. As an added bonus, we came across a coupon for $20 off any purchase of two adult entrees!! We were so excited.

It was just a great opportunity to simply get a "free" night out. We both enjoyed delicious steaks, wonderful bread and an amazing dessert. We actually couldn't even eat all of the huge Triple-layer Chocolate Ganache Cake, so we got to bring the rest home so share with our wonderful friends!

Thank you so much Llew and Lisa for a wonderful gift!! We truly treasured it and we treasure your friendship!!

O Christmas Tree (you know the tune)

We love getting our Christmas tree. We know of a few families that actually go out and cut down their own tree, but that's not us. In the past we've purchased our tree from a church where the proceeds went to the youth's mission trip. We'll be glad to pay a bit extra for missions, but when the prices started being $20 above other places, we had to resort to other avenues of tree furnishing. So, over the past few years, we have been flip-flopping between the grand tree providers of Home Depot and Wal-Mart, depending on their shipments and prices at the time of our shopping. This year, Wal-Mart was the big winner.

I have visions of one day, our tree decorating including stories of each ornament, who it belongs to and why it was given or bought. But, this is not the year for that to happen.

We have lots of fun ornaments that have some type of music or song or saying when you push a button. The kids love these. (By the end of December we are so over the Oscar Myer wiener song, you have not idea.) Usually, the goal is to have one adult (usually me) manning the unpacking of the ornaments and the other adult (therefore Craig) manning the tree - to make sure that ornaments are hung well and spread out. This year, Kalyn really wanted to unpack the ornaments so that added a special brand of chaos to the decorating. We did have fun looking at some of our past ornaments and how our family has grown over the years - we have managed to get a family ornament for most years (and at least every year since 2001 - when we were expecting Trinity).

In the end, our tree looks pretty good. I love driving home at night and seeing our tree lighting up our front window!

Our Annual Lights Trip

For the past few years, we have joined our friends for a trip up to Lake Lanier for their Magical Nights of Lights. It is an amazing Christmas light drive through display and we always have a great time. Our tradition is to caravan up there, grab some fast food dinner then drive down to about a mile outside of the park. Then we pile everyone into one vehicle and head through the show together. It saves a bit on the entrance fee and it just more fun doing it together.

Right after dinner, we exchanged gifts at Wendy's. The gifts were great for everyone!!

Anli, Virginia, Trinity and Kalyn all piled into the back of the van

while Xander sat up front with Craig and Jay.

The lights were great!!

We all had a great time!!

Unfortunately, we went a bit earlier in December than we have in the past, which meant that we missed the Live Nativity. That truly is the highlight of the trip and we were very sad to miss it. But, we know that we'll have more nativity opportunities this year and we'll be a bit more diligent about checking when it starts next year.

Catching Up

The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy - as you can probably tell by my lack of posting. I'll be backdating my next few blogs, just to keep our events straight for my own sanity. Enjoy reading about what we've been up to.