Christmas!

OK, so hopefully this post will wrap up the Christmas posts and get me back on track. 

Christmas Eve, Rachel M. and I hosted, what has morphed from our families’ Christmas Eve celebration into a Christmas Eve open house of sorts.  I love love love to bake between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I bake up a storm and Rachel typically contributes the savory finger foods (and some sweets too).  We invite anyone who doesn’t have anything to do on Christmas Eve.  We always think not many people will come, but it ends up being 6 or 7 families and just the right number.

Of course, we work around the awesome Christmas Eve service at the church. 

I’ll tell ya, the service is one I look forward to every year.  It’s not long and it’s all family, so I wasn’t sure how Kylie would do.  But as expected (since we went to the 2:00 service), she fell asleep and slept right through the best part…

It’s an awesome quiet time right before the mass chaos of Christmas.

Christmas Eve, we let Jenna open up one gift and traditionally, it’s always pajamas…usually Christmas themed.  This year, there was a little twist and it was a big hit!

Footies!  And to top off the excitement of the day, right before we left for service, Jenna comes in with this…

Good thing the tooth fairy and Santa know each other! 

Christmas morning, Jenna managed to sleep until about 7:30 or 7:45.  I woke up before her, of course, and got presentable.  When everyone was up, we traipsed downstairs.

This little scooter thing was Jenna’s gift to Kylie.  She saw it somewhere (on tv, online?) and paid for it herself.  It is like a 360 ride on toy and so it’s very easy to maneuver and Kylie LOVES it.

I love this but still haven’t found time to put photos in it.  In time though…in time.

Jenna took money and bought both of us stuff and she is getting really good at picking out thoughtful gifts.  For instance, because Steve volunteers at the gun range, she picked him out a Wii paintball game.  But the biggest “Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle” gift this year was for Jenna.

So Jenna reads the riddle (there were numbers underneath but for privacy, I cropped them out) and she’s trying to figure out what it means when the box starts vibrating.

Now before I catch heck about giving my 11 1/2 year old a cell phone, an iPhone no less, let me explain…this is my old iPhone 4 (part of our early Christmas to each other was that Steve and I upgraded to 5s) and because of our shared minutes plan, it only cost me $10 more to put Jenna on the plan AND I am under no contract and dropped our $30/month mifi, so still saved $20.  Anyway, we wanted to see how responsible she would be while we have little to lose and lots of control.  In this day of instant contact, I like being able to reach Jenna when she’s at a friend’s house or across the street/outside playing.  Anyway, it has been a good thing for us (the best way to get her to listen is threaten to take away the phone!) and the phone did come with a list of rules that she had to agree to before accepting the phone.

Anddddd…that’s her reading them.    But all in all, she’s been good with it and I loved her excitement.

Later in the afternoon, we went for the Taylor family Christmas and how wonderful it was!

My niece Alex and her family weren’t able to make it in town but this is the rest of the crew.  I love these folks.

After that, we went home and exchanged with the big kids which I always enjoyable.

This is Steve with his gift from Chase.  I can assure you, he didn’t smile like this for ANY gift I got him  Humph.

We bought Gage a Wii which was his big surprise.  He didn’t really get too excited over it here, but Micah says they play it all the time so I know he is glad to have it.

It was a good Christmas.  Not too chaotic…I wished the weather had been colder.  I’m a fan of white Christmases, but that definitely wasn’t in the cards this year.  Maybe next…

And that concludes the Taylor Family Christmas of 2012.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Our Weekend Visitor

Technorati Tags: Family,Christmas

The weekend before Christmas, we had a sweet little visitor at our house! 

That’s my grandson Gage!  It’s been a very long time since he’s hung out with us, but we sure did enjoy him.

Friday night, crazy as it was, Steve was bowling so I loaded up my two kids, Gage and Jenna’s neighbor friend, Grey and we went to have dinner at the local Mexican restaurant.

Truth be told, I think Gage had a little crush on Grey.    We managed dinner without incident and on our way home we noticed another living nativity off to the side of the road in the yard of our local children’s consignment.  We’d seen it going by and I promised I’d stop if it was still out and it was, so we did!

We had a good time and I was so glad to get to spend some quality time with the little guy.

Catching up...

Y'all bear with me.  I slacked up on my blogging during the holidays so I'm playing catch up. 

We had a lot of little fun activities coming into the Christmas holiday....at church, we have a Living Nativity.  This year, it was different...Kylie was too young to go out and see it, but I took her over there anyway before class started.  But I started teaching a 3 year old class (which I L.O.V.E. BTW) and I had the great pleasure of walking them over.

They all watched and listened so intently.  I was SO proud of them!  And some of the were even brave enough to pet the animals...

 

 

 

And lucky for us, no one melted down, which with 3 year olds, you just never know.  A few weekends before this, we decided to attend our little city's annual Christmas parade.  This year though, our church decided to be part.  Steve and several folks from the church put many hours into our float and then many members walked and handed out our church Christmas CDs.  I hi-jacked this photo from a friend (thanks L!)

 

 



 

I planned to watch the parade from the sidelines. However, there was so confusion with Jenna about that because she thought she was walking in it so by the time I got her dropped off the road was closed and I had no choice but to go.  And I had Kylie.  And no stroller.  So here's what we did...

 



 

 

OK, seriously, she only rode like this for a few minutes...but boy oh boy did she love it!  She kept waving and saying "hi!" "hi!" to everyone.  It was a great time and I kept hearing the folks watching saying "Wow" and "Whoa" when we passed by.  Just one of 1,593,293 reasons I love my church.

 

We also attended the big Christmas concert at what we affectionately refer to as the "Mother Ship" which is our home base church.  It's a rather large church and I love it, but I would not trade my regional campus for all the money in the world. 

 

Having said that, the concert was a wee bit crowded.  But wowzers...you haven't been to a Christmas concert until you've been to one at the Big House.

 



 

 

Steve played percussion, so the girls and I managed to find a whole row in the balcony.  With us, sat my friend Jill's husband with their two children and our friends the Yanceys with their 3 kids.  At the end with their newborn son were the Coates.  What that meant was our row had 8 children.  It was like a mini-daycare!  I couldn't get a ton of good pics, but check this sweet one out of Moses...

 



 

Our smaller choir had a special part too and let me tell you...they are small, but they are MIGHTY.  I would venture a guess that we took a grand majority of the best singers from the main campus.  They ROCKED. IT.  I mean...there just aren't words.  And then our awesome pastor, Jay, got up and said a few words.  It was a great night.  Kylie did so well...she loved the lights and the music.  She must have an ear for music because she's always loved it...



 

All in all, we had a great holiday season.  And bear with me as there is still more to come...

Christmas v1.1

The Saturday before Christmas, we got together with my side of the family.  If you can believe it, I walked out without my camera.  I was so irritated with myself but the weekend had been so hectic...I had my sweet grandson Gage with me and Steve was gone ALL day...and I was trying to cook and get the last minute stuff done for Christmas...something was bound to be forgotten and it was the camera.  Thank God for Apple and iPhones which take pics just as well as DSLRs sometimes!!  In a pinch, it'll do!

The spread this year wasn't as over-the-top as in years past.  I think I'm scaling back and so is everyone else. 

I love holiday food.  All of this was SO delish.  And the company wasn't bad either.  :)

It was Kylie's first time to EVER open a gift.  And there I was without my camera.  Turns out, it was fine because I used my camera to video and I'm SO glad I did.

She really was sure what it was all about, but she enjoyed the time with family nonetheless.

She really seemed like she turned a corner this season with the family.  She would let a variety of people hold her (not for long though) and she took to anyone who would play with her.  And of course, the big kids enjoyed the gift opening too...

I will tell you...I always go on and on about how much I enjoy spending time with the Taylors and I do.  I love them dearly.  But I love my family just as much.  We don't spend nearly enough time together and when we do get together, everyone always has such a great time and talks about why we don't do it more often.  I didn't get a family pic since I forgot my camera but I'm still glad we got together.  Now if we could just find time to do that more often...

Merry Christmas!

"Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. "
-Luke 2:11

Merry Christmas to all of my readers!

Just In Case...

...I get too busy to post for a  few days, I wanted to wish all of you who stop by and read what's going on in our crazy lives a Merry Christmas.

This weekend has been...challenging...to say the least.  I've had many, MANY, less than stellar parenting moments, so I am choosing now to make tomorrow and Tuesday way better days.

I can tell you that my girls went to see Santa and get a picture, but until I can find time to scan it in, I'll leave you with a picture worthy of of those Worst-Santa-Picture-of-the-Year sites.

But it makes me laugh every time.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas fun

A few weeks ago, our church life group had a little Christmas party.  I'm pretty certain I've mentioned how much I love my life group (and church) before.  We wore ugly Christmas sweaters (explaining the green one in the video) and did some fun games.

This is a video of a game of spoons...I was already "out" and I laugh hysterically every time I watch this.

 

One of the other games was to take balloons and hose and make a reindeer. Oh my word.

 

  And somehow the reindeer antlers became a new Christmas decoration in the yard of our fabulous leaders...

Oh so fun...

And there's been fun going on at home too.  We have a Santa that dances to Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree and a Grinch that sings the famous "Mr. Grinch" song.  Kylie loves to dance to them both and thinks the Grinch is hilarious as long as she doesn't have to touch him.

At the end, she's singing that last note with him.  And if you listen closely, you can hear her say "more" to Jenna meaning she wanted Jenna to push his button and make him sing again.

We did go to see Santa.  It went as well as could be expected.  I'll post that picture a little later...until then, here's a pic of my sweet Sunday School class watching the live nativity last weekend at church...

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

This was the first year in a while that I didn't do some Black Friday shopping.  Normally, I'll go out about 3-4pm on Black Friday after all those crazy, early morning shoppers are at home passed out.  But this year, I just didn't have it in me.  Instead, I sat at my kitchen table and basically finished my shopping.  I had done quite a bit already and I still have a little to go...but it is nothing I'm worried about.  Now I need to start wrapping!

I did go out earlier to visit with some old friends.  My dear, high school friend, Stacey, was in town and it has become a Black Friday tradition to meet her at some kids play place and let the kids run wild while we catch up.  She invites all her hometown friends and so I've grown to love meeting up with these families.  It's normally the only time I get to see them (except on Facebook) and so I always enjoy it. This year was extra special because it was the first time any of them had met Kylie.  I unfortunately never even thought to take a photo, but my friend, Beth, did bring Kylie a little something...lo and behold, it was the Little People barn and I already had that on our Amazon Wish List to get for her this Christmas!  The child was CRAZY with joy (after her 2 1/2 hour nap)...

She and Jenna played and played in the floor with it.  Then, they started playing in my Thanksgiving Day newspaper.  You know, the one with ALLLLL the ads???

Oh, did she have fun.  While she was occupied, we decided to get the tree up.  That was fine, but it wasn't long after I started decorating that she decided she wanted to "help".

Steve was stuck on the ladder because Kylie did not want to get off!  Finally, she saw I was decorating the tree and decided she wanted to do that too.

Man, Christmas is going to be so much fun with my fixed lens for my Canon!

The only problem was Kylie didn't understand that when you put the ornament on the tree, you LEAVE it on the tree!  She kept trying to take it off!!  She got her hand smacked once which she certainly didn't like, but after that,s he acted like she got it.

I just love these photos.  Such a special day for us.  As we were wrapping up the decorating, our neighbor Ping came to visit.  It was her day off and she tries to get over to see Kylie when she can.  You can see her to the left of our tree...

I can't wait to start getting presents wrapped and under the tree.  I'm going to have to start early this year because I'll only be able to wrap a few at a time with Kylie home...