Showing posts with label Christmas 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas 2010. Show all posts

Friday, January 7, 2011

Christmas Day 2010

Christmas Day is always VERY busy for me and Ben. People say "It must be so much easier since yall are both from the same city." I will say it is nice to be able to see both sides of the family, and its nice not to have to alternate holidays with each family. However, I would definitely not say it is "easier." To us, it seems harder because we feel like we have to be at everything, and that means a lot of driving back and forth throughout the day. By the end of the day, we are exhausted, but I wouldn't want it any other way!

Ever since my neice Kayli was born, I have always got up super early and gone over to my sister's house to watch them open Santa presents. I love being able to see/hear their excitement at all the the things they receive. This year was no exception. Me, Ben, my mom and my dad all woke up at 6:15 AM and headed on over to their house. (They are always up before daylight because they are so excited, so we have to go early!)
Santa sure was good to them! Here is Kayli and Chase in front of all their presents!

One of Chase's favorite gifts was his Cam Newton jersey... War Eagle!
Kayli got a Justin Bieber doll that sings some of his songs.
She also got a new guitar because she recently started taking lessons. We took a quick break to let her play Jingle Bells for us as we all sang along.
After they finished opening their presents, Ben and I headed over to his house around 8:30 to open Santa presents. Here is Meg and Sally with their stockings!
I took a couple of other pictures of us opening gifts, but they are all blurry.... I'm not sure what happened?!

But, after we finished opening presents we all headed out to play in this...
Yes, we woke up to a white Christmas! It was beautiful! Ben even let Emma out to experience her first time in snow...She loved it! I took several pictures of her, but this one just makes me laugh so hard! It captures her personality so perfectly! Ben was throwing snow up in the air, and she was jumping up trying to catch it with her mouth!
Ellie ventured out for a little while, but headed back in to the warmth.... and of course I had her dressed in her Santa outfit!
At 10:30, we headed over to my parents house to open Santa presents there. Yes, somehow Santa knows to deliver presents at all of these places! haha
One tradition that my sister has done every year is to take Kayli and Chase to the Dollar Store and let them pick our a present for everybody in the family. Ben always ends up with something really funny from Chase... this year, this was it!
They really do put a lot of thought in to a lot of the gifts, and are usually so excited to watch each person open their gift!
Ben and I gave Abby a Justin Bieber doll like the one Kayli got from Santa. (Yes, our almost 3 year old neice LOVES Justin Bieber... she pretends to call him on the phone all the time!) Look at the excitement on her face when she opened it! My brother better watch out.. apparently Abby is already "boy crazy!" haha
After we finished opening presents there, Ben and I headed back to his house around 4:00 to eat a Christmas dinner with his family. His mom always cooks a delicious meal and pulls out the fine china.
After dinner, we then headed over to my grandmothers house. This year we did things a little different. Instead of buying each person an individual gift, we decided to play Dirty Santa. It was actually a lot of fun!!
I did have to buy my grandmother one present though. I saw this stuffed maltese in a store at the beach and it looks just like her dog, Opie. (Ellie's baby, remember them?) I thought it was hilarious that they looked so much alike so I had to buy it...See for yourself... Here she is holding the stuffed animal when she opened it...
And here she is with Opie, the REAL dog. They look exactly alike don't they!
After presents, we all played Bingo for door prizes that my grandparents had picked up. It was an intense game of Bingo..everybody was concentrating so hard!

And that concludes our Christmas Day festivities. We left there, and went straight home to crash. It was a busy day, but a great day!

Christmas Baking

For the last couple of years, the girls in my family have all gotten together a few days before Christmas to do some annual Christmas baking. This year we all gathered at my grandparents house and each brought a few recipes. Sometimes we wrap the food up and deliver it to friends/coworkers. I didn't deliver any to anybody this year, I just joined in for fun! We always have a blast cooking together, and I love this tradition that we have started! My mom, being the lovely cook that she is, decided that she "didn't need to read the directions for her recipe. She just knew what to do." haha Well after dumping all the ingredients in a bowl and attempting to mix them, something just wasn't working out right. We laughed and laughed and laughed at her. Of course the directions did not say "Just dump and mix." Instead she was suppose to mix a few things, melt a few things, bla bla bla then put it all together. What makes it so funny, is that my mom really can cook well, but lately has gotten really lazy with the cooking so she alters recipes (ie. if she doesn't have an ingredient, she just leaves it out) and we end up with some interesting meals and sometimes we giver her a hard time for it. Of course this would happen during our baking session! Here is a picture of my grandmother laughing REALLY hard when she saw what my mom had done...oops! hahaha

But, I must say, she started over and definitely redeemed herself! Her cake came out perfectly!
Here is a picture of my sister with one of the desserts she made.. Isn't it pretty and festive?

I didn't take any other pictures of our treats but some of our menu included chocolate fudge, peanut brittle, toffee, white chocolate covered peanut butter ritz crackers, red velvet cake cookies, my moms cake and the pretzel m&m thing above. It was a really fun tonight, and as always great memories were made!

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Our First Christmas as "Parents"

This Christmas really snuck up on me and Ben. After Thanksgiving, we weren't at home for a solid weekend until the last weekend before Christmas. We never had time to get out our Christmas decorations, and for those of you that really know me, you know that killed me. So, the Sunday before Christmas, we were both at home and I said "We have to put up a Christmas tree. I can't stand it." Since we were going to Decatur on Wednesday for Christmas, that would only leave us 2 days to really enjoy the tree...but, I couldn't stand the thought of now putting one up at all, so we did it. Here is our tree.. I really loved our tree. I hate that we didn't get to enjoy it longer than we did.

We decided that since we wouldn't be at home for Christmas, we needed to go ahead and give Emma and Ellie their "Santa" presents. (Yes, we did buy them presents... after all, they are our babies!) We really just bought one of those prepackaged stockings filled with dog toys, and then bought them each a separate toy of their own.

I spread them out on the floor in front of the tree, while Ben distracted the pups in the other room.

When they were set, Ben ran in the room and then we called for the dogs. I must admit, we had no clue how they would react or whether they would even care about the toys. We had no clue that we would get the reaction that we did!
They went crazy! They were seriously like a bunch of kids on Christmas morning! They were running back and forth picking up every single toy, throwing it in the air with their mouth, as fast as they could. It was like they couldn't look at everything fast enough! haha


I would give anything if I could have captured this on video. I just didn't even think about it because I really thought it wouldn't be anything special. But, I'm not gonna lie...it was such an awesome moment that my eyes seriously watered with joy, and Ben, he had the biggest grin on his face that I've ever seen. If we enjoyed this moment with our dogs this much, I can't imagine what we will be like when its actually Baby Adam's opening his/her gifts on Christmas morning.

This was the perfect start to our holiday season. More posts to come (though it may be after New Years, because we off to the beach tomorrow and I doubt I have time to post while there!) Hope you all have a safe and Happy New Year!!

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