Christmas- Part One

This Christmas goes down as one of the highlights of my life so far. I am not exaggerating. Our first Christmas with Amelia was so special because we had our brand new baby girl with us to celebrate. Then, last year was fun because she had just turned one and all she really cared about was playing with the wrapping paper and boxes. But this year was all about the excitement!

The excitement had been building since Santa came to visit Amelia's pre-school class and brought her a baby doll. We had been talking about how Santa was going to come and bring more presents on Christmas. We even tried to meet him and have our photo taken with him a couple of weeks ago with Lindey and Pay, but I made the mistake of renting one of those strollers that looks like a car when we got to the mall and Amelia refused to get out of it. I was so over her for that! But what can you do?

We've been home for the last couple of weeks, we have been shopping, wrapping gifts, cooking and playing. We've also been talking a lot about Jesus and his birthday and Santa and the gifts he would bring. Amelia has almost "gotten it" this year. I'm looking forward to using these things even more next year as leverage for good behavior. She didn't quite catch on to "he's making a list and checking it twice" this year, but next year hopefully I'll be able to use this to my advantage.

Enough chatter, on to the pics!
Amelia, as always, had an extensive holiday wardrobe to squeeze into a few days. I know we are ridiculous, but what can I say? I just love her in red, and I never met a polka dot tight I didn't love. I appliqued this little Christmas tree shirt for her and I thought she looked so precious in it.

I was excited to start some fun traditions this year now that Amelia is old enough to participate, including making cookies for Santa. Mimi was pretty pumped to get to help in the kitchen.

The sprinkles were her favorite. She carried them all around the grocery store with her and couldn't wait to put them on the cookies.

On Christmas Eve morning, Papa came over to help You Know Who build the You Know What, and we happened to have his birthday gift waiting for him. Mimi was generous to help him open it. We try to always make sure Papa has a special birthday even though it is on Christmas Eve.

 Even though I didn't take a pic of it, he loved his new coffee mug with a collage of photos of him and Mimi to add to his collection. Funny sidenote: My dad is a huge coffee drinker. He drinks it all day every day, even when he's working outside in 100 degree weather. Last year, I thought it would be cute to get him a mug with Mimi's pic on it to enjoy while he drank his coffee. And I was right, he loved it. He loved it so much, in fact, that it is placed in a prime position on the mantle at my parents' house, lol.

Later on that day, we went to my grandparents' house for lunch. Amelia enjoyed playing with family, and especially enjoyed playing in this giant gift bag. Guess Santa could have saved some cash and just gotten her a few of those.

 This pictures aren't fabulous, but they are special to me because I love having photos of Mimi with her great grandparents. These are my mom's parents, the only grandparents I still have living.

 

After lunch, my dad came back over to give Cliff a hand, who had to miss lunch because he was still working on the swingset. Bless his heart, he worked so hard! They worked until after it got dark on Christmas Eve, but it was all worth it to see Mimi's face on Christmas morning...

...which is where I will pick up on the next post! We've got a lot of playing to do and not a lot of time to blog, so I'll finish this later.

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus

Sunday afternoon, we went to the first birthday party for our friends, Chad and Anna's sweet little Lily. It was a Winter "One"derland theme, and it featured Santa Claus as a special guest. We had been trying to get Amelia pumped up to see Santa, and she actually did get kind of excited, until he started saying, "Ho, Ho, Ho!"



That's when she realized that it wasn't really Santa; it was her daddy! And of course she announced to everyone at the party, "It's Cliff!" Ha! Sometimes she calls him Cliff and I think it is hilarious. Cliff isn't a huge fan of it. I'm sure it's because she hears me call him that. Mare used to call our dad "Honey" when she was little because that's what my mom called him. I love stuff like that.

We had a great time at the party, and Cliff made an awesome Santa Claus. We'll be able to see how Amelia feels about the REAL Santa Claus, when we go to meet him Friday with Lindey and Pay. Photos to come!

(PTL that all my work projects are done for a while, and I am free to blog again!)

Star of the show

My friend, Erin posted this on Facebook and I just had to share. Amelia isn't quite old enough to participate in the "Righteous Rockers" children's choir at church yet, but she is in Sunday School with some of the kids. When they performed one of their songs from their Christmas musical in church yesterday, her teachers asked if Amelia could perform with them. I wasn't sure how she would do, but we gave it a shot. She actually stood up there the whole time like such a big girl! She didn't sing or clap, but in her defense, she had never heard the song. I'm sure she was wondering what the heck she was doing up there, ha.

Erin's little boy is the one in the sweater vest dancing around. It makes me laugh every time I watch it. Mimi is on the front row in the red dress. She's the one standing there not doing anything, ha. Oh, but I was so proud! I was just grinning and clapping as if she was the star of the show. Can't wait to see her particpate next year. Things like this just show how much my life has changed that this kind of thing is what excites me the most!

Edited to add: For some reason, the formatting on the blog cuts Mimi off, so maybe you can see her if you look at it on Erin's facebook here, or your can just imagine that this is what she looked like in the video:

since like I said, she basically stood there and did nothing. But it made this mama proud!

Playing catch-up

Oh, I am so over myself for letting a month go by without blogging! This time of year is so crazy busy for everyone, and especially for us since it's basketball season and Cliff is gone a lot. I have been using most of my Mimi-free time to do chores or work on my newest hobby, sewing.

But here I am today with a re-cap of some of the things we've been up to lately, for my memory's sake, more than anything else since these photos have already been shared with most of you on facebook.



We've spent some time at one of our favorite places, Kids Kingdom.

We had a Mama/Mimi morning out with breakfast at Cracker Barrel with just the two of us and her dolls followed by a stop at the park.

Don't tell her, but word on the street is Santa is getting her a swingset. She is going to DIE over it. Swings are her very favorite thing in the world.

We've gone to birthday parties,

out to lunch with Papaw Bob and Joyce after church

and decorated a pink tree of her very own for her room.

Last week we enjoyed one of our favorite holiday traditions, the Brookhaven Christmas parade. We live close to downtown, so it's fun to walk down with Amelia in the wagon. We went with our neighbors/friends, the Hutsons, and Amelia got to play with one of her favorite people, Elizabeth (wiza-bet). Mimi's other fave big girl, Emory was walking in the parade with her gymnastics group.

I have loved her in a lot of outfits over the past two years, but I don't think I've ever loved her more than in that hat that Aunt Kaki knitted for her with her peacoat, sweater dress, tights and boots. It was just too much! We had a ball at the parade even though it was freezing. Mimi loved getting to play with her friends, watching the floats and bands, and picking up candy. She stayed up until 11 that night and only gave it up when Katie offered to drive her around the neighborhood! We will not be making of habit of letting her eat suckers at 8:30 at night.

That's just a little taste of what's been keeping us so busy. Work is dying down, and we're almost out for Christmas break. I promise to be back to better blogging (oh I heart alliteration) in the very near future!

A star in the making

I captured some videos of Amelia singing some of her favorite songs last night. She is constantly singing something. I have to admit that even though it's precious, it does get a little annoying sometimes, especially when it's time to go to bed and we no longer have the paci to put a cork in it, ha.



Singing from Angela Furr on Vimeo.


Singing in the tub from Angela Furr on Vimeo.

Maybe I'm a little biased, but I think there's some natural talent there. The next Carrie Underwood, perhaps?

Halloween

We had such a fun time with Amelia on Halloween this year! I think having a child really makes every holiday more fun. Of course on Halloween, it's all about the costume. And this year, I decided to be a little less frilly than I normally am and we decided on Wonder Woman!

Doesn't she look like such a ham? If only you had seen us trying to actually get her in the costume. I wasn't even sure if she would wear it since she wouldn't even let me try it on her in the weeks leading up to Halloween. But being the crafty parents we are, we took her over to her pals, Ella and Lily's house and once she saw them all dressed up (and we bribed her with getting to swing on their swingset), she happily put on the rest of the custume. Whatever it takes, y'all.

 After stopping at the Smiths' to see the girls, we stopped on Becker street to see some of our other favorite girls dressed up. How cute are all these girls?

After those stops, we headed over to our church's fall festival and trunk or treat. Amelia got a little taste of trick or treating the day before at school when all the kids from the daycare got to trick or treat around campus. I got to walk with her and she LOVED it. Once she realized saying "Trick or Treat" meant getting candy, she was all over it. (To her dismay, we gave away most of her candy at the church the next night, after a little taste testing of course. You know, to make sure it was safe.)

I love this pic Katie took of her that shows just how excited she was to get candy. (As usual, all of the photos in this post were taken by her. My camera is still broken and I haven't replaced it. Boo. Let me know if anyone wants to buy me one for Christmas.)

 And then, after she got candy, she'd start digging around in her bag to get a taste.

That girl ate more candy that weekend than she has in her entire life! We all had a ball. Now, we are looking forward to the holiday season coming up. I can't believe it is that time already. I adore Thanksgiving and we have so much to be thankful for this year. I have a feeling Christmas is going to be a lot of fun this year too!

Amelia's Milk and Cookies Party

I have finally recovered from the party enough to blog about it and post some more photos! When I was trying to come up with a follow-up to the first birthday party, I looked at lots of my fave party blogs for inspiration. After coming across these adorable parties, I just thought milk and cookies would be a perfect fall party for a two year old. Who doesn't love milk and cookies, right? I knew that I wanted to give our party a more colorful spin than the ones I had seen in blogland.
 
And colorful it was!

I'll keep the commentary to a minimum and just let the fab photos by my friend Lindey speak for themselves.

 

 

I have to give credit for the adorable tiered trays. I saw the idea here and just knew they'd be perfect for our party. I added a coat of a food-safe sealant I found at Home Depot so I could serve cookies on them without killing our guests.

I made the cookies pops myself. It took forever, but I just didn't want to pay what they were selling for elsewhere. It was fun learning some new tricks. It was my first time to work with royal icing and I was pleased with how they turned out. I just love the internet for teaching me so many new things and providing so many great ideas!

  

 

The banner, cupcake toppers, favor tags and all other paper goods were courtesy of one of my favorite party girls, Kim at the TomKat studio. Back in the summer when I started planning, I posted on her facebook wall hoping one of her fans might know where I could find a cute cookies and milk invitation. To my surprise and delight, Kim contacted me herself and said she had been dying to design a collection around this theme. I was so pleased with how it all turned out.

I loved using some of the photos Lindey took of Amelia this year along with the fun storyboard she made from the invitation photo shoot to decorate the food table. 

 



There were several disasters on party day and the days leading up to the party that led to much stress for me, but luckily most of the guests never knew the difference. And even though the cake fell apart on the drive to the party, I was able to save the top tier and the birthday girl didn't seem to mind.

She loved opening her gifts! Well, for a while, anyway. She wasn't a fan of some of her guests getting in her personal space and touching her stuff and she may or may not have bitten one of them and had to have a time out. Sorry again, Pay!

While lots of things didn't go according to what I had planned, we still had a great party and we had fun celebrating with lots of our friends and family. Thanks again to everyone who came and to everyone who helped make yet another over the top party happen for this cute girl!

I am already saying I am going to scale it down next year, but some people are saying they will have to see it to believe it, ha. We shall see in a year!

And because I always wish others would share on their party posts:

Sources:

Amelia's shirt: Addy Reece Boutique

pettiskirt: Patiecakes

paper straws: CDK designs

banner, cupcake toppers, cake topper, favor tags, cookie jar labels: The TomKat Studio

polka dot baloons: Polka Dot Market

large milk bottles: Crate and Barrel (I have since seen them at Wal-Mart)

small milk bottles: reused Starbucks frappucino bottles

photography: lindeymageephotography