Christmas 2010

After we put AB to bed on Christmas Eve, Santa paid a visit to our house!

He left a sweet little red kitchen with all the accessories that a little girl would need to go with it!

I woke up around 6:30 Christmas morning, just dying for our girl to wake up and see what Santa had brought!

BUT…She slept, and she slept, and she slept…

About 7:30 I started coughing as loud as I could by her bedroom door. Still nothing…

DW and I were watching her the whole time on the video monitor, and she never even rolled over. She was OUT!

Finally about 7:45, Devin just yells, “ho ho ho”- AB’s head popped up and she sleepily said, “Ho ho???” and then she yelled for “Da-Da!!!” to come get her!

Little “Christmas-Carol” had some major bed head!

With sleep still in her eyes and in between yawns, she was able to make her way to the living room to check out the surprises that Ho-Ho brought!

Most of Santa’s gifts were just laying under the tree, but he did wrap a couple of hers for her to open…

He also left a stocking full of little surprises!  

   

Santa also made sure to set up Annabelle’s nativity scene on the fireplace, because he always wants her to remember what the day is REALLY about, too!

Santa had a little nativity crisis the night before, though and didn’t know if the nativity was going to happen.

Joseph and Baby Jesus were M.I.A.

We keep the nativity set in a basket under the table where AB & Cooper’s trees sit, so that she can play with it throughout the month. When we went to set it up that night, all of the pieces were there except for those two! DW and I searched in every toy bin and basket in the playroom and had no luck.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Had it been a wise-man missing, we could have pulled it off because AB can only count to two anyway… but BABY JESUS is the STAR of the nativity and happens to also be AB’s favorite! She calls him “De-sus.” So in pure desperation, I grabbed up the daddy and the baby from her dollhouse and stuck them in as backups for Joseph and Baby Jesus.

Now, I know our girl is only two, and probably would not have noticed, but it just bothered me that “Baby Jesus” was wearing pink and had a hairbow! So, I continued the search for the real ones. FINALLY, it hit me! The coffee table! AB is always playing in those drawers.. maybe she’d stuck them in there! BINGO! And not only BINGO---JACKPOT, too! I found LOTS of things I’d been searching for, not just Joseph and Baby Jesus!

After all of that nativity drama, we were able to put the daddy and the baby girl back in the dollhouse and return Joseph and Baby Jesus to their spot in nativity scene! Whew…

Annabelle had such a fun time with her kitchen that morning! I LOVED it! It was so fun to see her enjoy something so much! She loved that it had a phone, of course! The cabinets to open and close were also a huge hit!

After presents at our house, we went next door to Pappy & Granny’s house for breakfast! Devin’s Daddy always cooks Christmas morning breakfast and we wear our pajamas over to eat and open presents. The pj’s is why there are no pictures of it on my blog. We have some, but I’m just sparing everyone from seeing me in my jammies with bedhead and no makeup. :)

Here’s one of AB, though, waiting on Pappy’s pancakes…

After breakfast and all of our fun gifts at Pappy & Granny’s we headed back to our house for Christmas naps and to play with our new toys! AB dressed up (she’s loving her dress-up shoes and jewels that Granny & Pappy got her!)and cooked

ALL DAY LONG…even after she’d had her bath that night, she was still at it!

I’m in the process of re-organizing the playroom and making room for the kitchen and new toys, and AB is busy playing with them!

The day after Christmas was SO COLD! It was freezing here, and we even got snow flurries that morning! It was so crazy to see white falling from the sky at our house!

 

The next day, we did Christmas with my parents. They’d driven home from my brother’s, the day before. We opened gifts and then had lots of seafood for dinner.

 

Grammy & AB going through her new clothes and trying on her new stuff…

    

Annabelle trying out her new desk from Grammy & Pop. They even made sure she had plenty of markers & crayons to stock it. :) Pop assured me they were all washable. See one of our gifts in the background?!?!? It’s a compound miter saw!!! Ahhhhh!!!  SOOOOOOO excited!!!! I can not wait to cut something!!!! I felt like I was getting my first car all over again, when momma told me, “for pete’s sake, don’t cut your finger off using that thing! This isn’t a baby saw, Annie, this is the real deal. Yall, BE CAREFUL with it!” Ha…  We’ll be careful, I promise, Mom!  :)

It was another wonderful Christmas.

~amw~

Christmas Shenanigans- Take 3

Christmas has come and gone. It seems to happen so fast. I wanted to blog about the week leading up to Christmas before I share about actual Christmas morning so that I can keep it in chronological order…

The weekend of the 18th, we took a road trip to Georgia to Devin’s Mom’s for our Christmas with her. She and her husband, George, have been working on some home renovations, but still managed to find the time to deck their halls! The house was all decorated and there were lots of lights in the yard. There was even a big snow globe, which AB referred to as a “noon” (balloon)! :) That was definitely her favorite!

We had a big lunch of Saturday and then it was present time, of course the favorite time for all of the kids!

George’s Dad, also lives up there and he dressed up as Santa to surprise the kids. AB wanted NOTHING to do with him, and we made sure to tell him it was nothing personal, she’s creeped out by all Santa’s right now. Maybe next year…

Speaking of AB and Santa, earlier that week, Ho-Ho dropped by the office. DW called me to take her down there to see him. (Ho-Ho was his cousin, who’d dressed up for his kids’ daycare Christmas party. How sweet is that?!?!? He was such a great Santa, too! My FIL dropped by the office and didn’t even recognize him! That’s how good his costume was! He even had tiny Santa glasses…

We thought for sure little miss would be more fond of him if he was somewhere familiar to her. She’s as comfortable at that office as she is our house, but when she saw Ho-Ho, she was sticking close to Daddy that day!

Ha!!! I zoomed in on her face in that picture…She’s thinking, “There ain’t NO WAY, Momma!!!”

Ho-Ho did finally manage a smile and a high-five out of her though!

 

Back to the Ga. trip---  Saturday night, Devin, Adam, AB, Lauren and I ran into town to get a couple things and decided to get some dinner. There was a restaurant we wanted to try, but ended up going into a different one. We were glad we did, too! We had some really good seafood that night! Sunday morning we headed back to Florida for a very busy week leading up to Christmas!

Wednesday we met up with Aunt Carrie, Allie Claire and Aunt Kate for a Christmas lunch at the Ivy House and a little gift exchanging. Aunt Kate gave the girls the CUTEST cupcake stands with wooden cupcakes and they were definitely the hit of the day with the girls. When we got back to Carrie’s, Allie and AB exchanged their gifts.

So sweet to watch them helping each other. Until they started snatching and pushing! We’re still working on the whole sharing thing.

Then, on Wednesday night, we went to to look at Christmas lights. This year’s lookers included Pappy, Granny, Aunt Kels, Uncle Adam & Aunt Nen. (We were missing Grammy & Pop this year…they spent Christmas in North GA with my brother and his family). Before the light-looking, we ate at Blue Highway for some yummy pizza first..

We went to the houses that were featured in last week’s Gainesville Sun. So neat to see how much work some people do and the creative things, too… like this one- there’s “Ho-Ho” on the porch!

The pilot & co-pilot.

My pictures are terrible, but this was the neighborhood that all decorated their houses! Love it! You could tell there was some competition going on! ha…

This next one was AB’s favorite because of the giant Elmo inflatable! I didn’t even try to count how many blow-up things they had in this yard. Wow. The entire house (sides and all) were also covered in lights.

Thursday was DW’s last day of work! That night, to keep from having to do it on Christmas Eve, we (meaning HE) put together AB’s big gift. I was a little worried when I saw all of the screws, nuts and bolts that came with it… but a little less than two hours later he was done!

Christmas Eve we went to Cracker Barrel for a big breakfast and then spent the rest of the day at home…getting ready for a big steak for dinner that night, and then the Christmas Eve service at our church. I love that we’ve been able to go to that service for the past couple of years. Our family did the reading and lit one of the last advent candles and even though I have a dislike for talking in front of people with in a microphone, I was glad to get to be a part of it. My favorite part of the whole service, though, is when we all light a candle and stand on the front steps of the church and sing “Silent Night.” I just love that part.

We got home in time to get AB down a little earlier than normal so that “Ho-Ho” could come pay a visit!

~amw~

Christmas Greetings!

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

(We had to do two different cards this year, because I didn’t order enough of the first one!)

This will forever be one of my favorite pictures of our girl and it made the four days of trying to get a cute picture of her for our cards totally worth it! :)

We’re getting ready for what has become a Christmas Eve tradition for us… steaks for dinner with all the fixings. I’ve also made a peanut butter pie with freshly whipped cream piled so high the lid won’t fit on top. Yum. :) After we stuff ourselves, we will head to our church’s Christmas Eve service. So thankful for our Savior’s birth.

Merry Christmas!

~amw~