Family Christmas Card 2010

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Catching up before Christmas...

With the busyness of TOO MANY projects, I've gotten behind on posting. Sorry! Here's what we've been up to lately...

One of our Advent activities was edible mangers. A cupcake paper was our manger then we filled it with pudding (don't know what that might represent!) and topped it with crushed Mini-Wheats for hay. We then made Baby Jesus out of marshmallows.

I hate that we made Baby Jesus look so scarey!

Riley decided to be Mary one night...

Such a good daddy reading to the Bible to his girls...

Last night our Advent activity was to drive around looking at Christmas lights. Well it was "lights out" for Josie so she missed out on the fun but the rest of us enjoyed ourselves. Phil mad a good point...it seems when we were kids everybody decorated their houses for Christmas but we noticed last night how that number has really dwindled. Is it the busyness of life that keeps people from decorating, the expense of the added electricity, who knows? It's kinda sad though.

Today, Daddy and Riley took some things to the recycling trailer which is conveniently parked just a few miles from our rural house. As a science teacher, Phil really feels it is important for us to recycle and to teach the importance of it to our girls.

Tonight we started our story "What God Wants For Christmas." I found this last year at a local Christian bookstore and it is wonderful. The book tells a different part of the nativity story every night and has a gift box to be opened with a character or symbol in each. We were a night behind so we read about the angel Gabriel and Mary tonight.

Josie even got involved!

More Christmas fun to come!

A Broken Baby Jesus and Girls' Day Out

We've had a good week of festive Christmas fun including making our Christmas cookies, delivering them to some family members that don't get to get out, as well as painting a nativity scene that my mom found for us. It was a ceramic set of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Riley has asked almost everyday since Mom got it a few weeks ago if we could paint it yet. We finally started on it this week. We started with Baby Jesus. Since the first time we introduced Riley to the nativity story and scenes a few years ago she has been obsessed with carrying Baby Jesus around. I have no problem with that...I'm not going to tell her, "No you can't take Jesus with you!" Until she understands completely that He's always with us, the visual of Baby Jesus can only help.

Anyways...every nativity we've had in the past has been breakable so I found a wonderful Fisher Price Little People set this year. Yet instead of carrying that Baby Jesus, she wanted to carry THIS Baby Jesus...

Needless to say, Baby Jesus has already been dropped, broken, then glued back together. (Thanks Uncle Russ!)

We also painted Mary and started on Joseph but I didn't have any great pictures of that. Sorry!

Today, we had a girls'day out shopping for fun baby stuff for my sister! We found the greatest consignmnent shop where she got a lot of cheap, nice maternity clothes and I got some clothes for the girls. Mom also found some cheap dress-up clothes for a certain little girl obsessed with pretty dresses and being a princess. Funny how things changed...I always swore, "My daughter will never wear pink or frills!" Look at her, she looks TOO grown up!

25 Days of Christmas

It's so hard to believe that it is December and Christmas is just around the corner. I won't get back on my soapbox from yesterday about how commercialized Christmas has become but I will say we are trying hard to teach our children what Christmas truly is about. To help with this, we've started something new...an Advent calendar. For each of the 25 days leading up to Christmas, we have planned an activity to do as a family. From reading Christmas stories, to making cookies, to delivering those cookies to elderly people, we are trying to focus on quality time together as a family while learning about the true meaning of Christmas...Jesus' birth and sharing His love with others.


Last night was, of course, the 3rd day and the first Sunday of Advent. We read from the Bible about the angel Gabriel visiting Mary and telling her she would be the mother of Jesus.

We made this Advent wreath and lit the first candle. This wreath has a special meaning to me thanks from some borrowed items from our families. The wreath is borrowed from my mother-in-law while the candle holders of the white candles are from my mother. The tall candle holder in the middle was a wedding present. Something from each of our separate families as well as our own family...

Every night Riley has a coloring page with a scripture from about the birth of Christ.

Today we made Christmas cookies from scratch. I always plan WAY more than I can actually accomplish. I had this whole big plan of making the cookies from scratch as well as royal icing to do this nice smooth decorating on top. That was way to complex to try with a 3 year old and 8 month old! Riley was very helpful though and once Phil got home he pitched right in and we improvised on the decorating.

I worked with the royal icing while Daddy and Riley used some buttercream icing I whipped up then topped the cookies off with colored sugar.

Josie being her normal wonderfully content self!

Here are the finished products...

Tomorrow we plan to deliver cookies to some of our elderly family members that can't get out. We also plan to deliver this special plate of cookies to our dear friends who just welcomed their fourth child last night. Congrats to Joe & Miranda! We can't wait to meet little Brady!

Christmas Fun in Nashville

My parents had the wonderful idea of planning a fun-filled day to Nashville as our Christmas present. We are so blessed to have such a fun and loving family and truly enjoyed our day together.


We started off at the Grand Ole Opry with the Rockettes Christmas show. It was a neat experience to visit such a historic place and the show was wonderful. Man, those girls can dance and kick! The best part of the show was a live nativity scene at the end...no Rockettes in this scene!


We couldn't take pictures during the show so I snapped a few of the family and stage at least.

After the show, we grabbed lunch then headed to what's left of the Opry Mills Mall...Bass Pro. Sadly a flood last year ruined this wonderful mall and only Bass Pro has been able to open back up. Of course we LOVE Bass Pro but we normally visit the one in Indiana. I had forgotten how much smaller the Nashville store was and we were all a bit disappointed with how cramped it was with merchandise and people! I would definitely recommend the Indiana Bass Pro over the Nashville one anyday.

Later on our agenda was the Ice show at Opryland Hotel. Apparently parking at the hotel is pricey so we decided to park and walk. Not a good idea! We had no idea how far away we'd parked! We walked at least 20 minutes and this was with my pregnant sister in tow who already wasn't feeling well. I felt horrible that we made her walk but once we FINALLY got there I think we all enjoyed ourselves.

We really didn't know what to expect at this Ice show. We had just heard it was ice sculptures with lights. When we got there people were snaked around in a long line all dressed in these "lovely" blue parkas. We were informed that it would be 9 degrees inside and so everyone had to wear parkas. I have to admit, I think we all were quite taken a back by this but we sucked it up and put on the lovelies...

Josie was a trooper. No blue parka for her. We bundled her up in her jacket with a thick blanket they provided us with and she did fine.

The theme for the Ice show was "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." I was expecting sculptures of the normal Christmas characters...reindeer, elves, snowmen and the like. Shows what I know...it was actually based around an old claymation movie called "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" about Santa Claus being an orphan and raised by a family named the Kringles. Needless to say, I didn't completely understand most of the scenes but it was still very neat to see all this created from ice...

Papaw loves the movie "A Christmas Story" and wanted to be like the little boy who got his tongue stuck to a metal pole! Of course, he really didn't do it but got pretty close when my brother-in-law gave him a slight nudge. Dad's reaction was priceless!

This was a pretty neat little area. It was a castle completely made of ice. You could walk up steps of ice to a slide of ice and slide down on your lovely blue parka. Riley wouldn't do it but two other kids would...Phil and Uncle Craig!

The best part was, once again, saved for last. An ice nativity scene...it just made you stand in awe of its beauty, intricacy, and, of course, meaning-the TRUE reason for the season.

After turning in our lovely blue parkas, we headed for the Opryland Hotel. Most of us had never been inside so we had to check it out. It was HUGE, almost like it's own little city. It was beautifully decorated and had it's own waterway through the middle where you could take a boat ride.

We had heard that there were some Christmas activities for kids somewhere in the hotel. Finding anything in that massive place is a challenge. After another long walk, we finally found the activities. Much to my disappointment though...THEY WERE NOT FREE!!!! Ugh! $3 for a train ride, $5 for a story and cookies with Mrs. Claus, $7 to walk through a hall of trees! Warning...gonna get on a small soapbox...Christmas has become way too commercialized and it seems like it's all about making and spending money! What happened to the true meaning...telling others of Jesus' birth and giving of ourselves? I'm really hoping that we can instill that in our children so that they don't get a warped sense of what Christmas is! Sorry...I'll hop down now...

Back to the overpriced Christmas activities...Riley loved the train and since we'd walked this far, Mamaw paid for her to ride the train. Of course Mommy and Josie had to ride with her...

It was a packed day but we had so much fun. Riley couldn't stop telling Mamaw and Papaw, "Thank you for our trip...thank you for taking us to the "ho-tail" (that's how she says hotel...with a southern draw)...thank you for the Christmas show." We all had a blast and can't thank Mamaw and Papaw enough for such a wonderful Christmas present.