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!