Dec 21st

This is our Christmas Kick-off!


We do Christmas with all four of my parents, all three of my brothers, sis-in-law, niece and nephew. My parents exchange gifts and then we each get one gift from the four of them. Usually something *extra* special or if there was a big item any of us asked for, we would probably get it here so that one set of parents doesn't use up our whole Christmas allowance on one gift, ha.




Nathan and I got our "Annual Weekend at Opryland plus one expensive meal while you are there" gift, our favorite :) We ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS choose to eat at Old Hickory (best steaks EVERRR), but we are thinking about trying something new this year. The hotel added great (so I've heard) new resturants when they re-opened. We'll see!

My girls got THE cutest rain coats and matching boots you've ever seen. No, really. They aren't just cheap plastic ones like I usually buy them, these are heavy, lined BEAUTIFUL rain coats!



I made homemade BBQ to prove that I could... it's awesome. I don't love BBQ (Nathan doesn't like it at all and he LOOOVES mine :) Says it's the best he's ever had... and his brother owns a BBQ resturant! ha.). My parents ate the left-overs for a couple of days afterward and I kept getting texts about how good it was! Go me.

This was the "to-go" bag Brynn fixed for herself. She said, "I have all the food I ever need."
It contained:
one brownie. one piece of dark chocolate bark. three cherries. one deviled egg. and two (real) dog biscuits.




When we got home... all that was left was a cherry and the bark. Oops.

Cristmas Card Rejects.

I had a really cute idea for our Christmas cards this year using all five of us. But that didn't work out.

Then I had another cute idea.

That didn't work either.

I tweaked it a little bit and decided to shoot just the kiddos and keep the idea.

It didn't work. Well, it worked okay, but in the end we couldn't afford to do Christmas cards anyway so the whole thing was scratched.

I did end up with a couple of cute shots of the kiddos I thought I would still share! Hate to waste smiles!

















p.s. Can someone get me a thesaurus? I need another word for 'CUTE'.

Christmas Crafts.

Uno:
Reindeer with the littles' hands and feet!

We did this one night when Nathan was at the base for a reception. It was super easy and fun! The kids loved it. Plus, it was a great opportunity to practice tracing, cutting, and gluing for the twins.

Trace their foot on one piece of construction paper and cut it out.


Trace their hands on a darker piece of paper and cut them out.


Then just glue the hands on the top of the foot for your reindeer head. Add eyes and a nose (we just happen to have red glitter, so we used that, but you could also use a red pom-pom or just draw with red crayon/marker).






Voila'. Adorable reindeer.
I actually made four of these using Cale's hands and feet for his teachers at school (since there are so many of them and we don't know them well yet), added a bag of oatmeal butterscotch cookies and that was their gift!



Dos:
paper snowflake ornaments

This one was incredibly easy too, just not as cute.

All you do is cut up the cardboard from a roll of wrapping paper into several strips (They will need 8-10 each). Flatten them out and let them decorate their strips, add their name/date to one. Punch a hole on each end of each strip, about 1/2 inch away from the edge.

Then using pipe cleaners ($1 for 50- we used white/glittery white), string a pipe cleaner thru the bottom hole of each strip of cardboard. Twist two pipecleaners together and do the same on thru the top of the strips. Twist the ends together and you have a snowflake!



They weren't THE prettiest snowflakes I've ever seen, but I love a good cheap craft! Plus, watching the kids try to hang them on the tree by themselves was worth it :)