Yes, it's been a while. What can I say...I sorta take a break in the winter months from blogging...not a good habit to get into b/c then I'm always stressed about getting caught up again! But, never the less, here is our Christmas post :)

We are so grateful and so blessed to have so much family so close ! (how about that for some "so" in one sentence!) but it definitely means that we have to spread our Christmas celebrations out a bit so the children are not completely inundated with presents all in one day!

We had a great time up in Greensboro with Poppi and DeeDee, and Uncle Brandon and Aunt Angel. Mom made an awesome dinner, like always!, and then we had a sweet time of sharing gifts with each other.

We had some time with Grandpa and Nanny during the afternoon on Christmas Eve. Since the plan was for Braxton to receive a big Chuggington train set, he received several "pieces" of the set throughout the gift exchanges, so it was fun to watch it all come together!

We had to take some "family photos" in our Christmas outfits after we got home from the awesome Christmas Eve service at church! It was so fun to have the kids in the service with us, singing along to all the songs and being a part of the spirit of the season!

Christmas morning couldn't come fast enough for these two!! Though, I must say, we are SO grateful that our children sleep (for the most part!) til 8:00am!

Nana and Aunt Kelly and Shauny came over Christmas morning for brunch and more present sharing!

And Christmas night, the door was still open for more!! Memama, Uncle Clarke, Uncle Watts, Carson and Cooper joined us for a night Christmas dinner.

Layton's first Christmas was a big hit for the little guy....tuckered out at the dinner table.

3rd Annual Christmas Party!

Well, our annual Christmas party proved to be just as entertaining as each year past!! It actually seems to keep getting better and better...I think mainly due to the craziness that always ensues with the Gift Exchange game we play. Ah, the memories :) From last year when our dear friend Bert decided to steal a picture from our house and use that as his gift to enter the game to this year when Shawn and I wrapped up some live goldfish in a bag of water with a fish bowl as one of our gifts. The laughs never stopped! Especially when Bert and Holly were the ones who would open that bag of goldfish and would end up at the end of the night with 3 dead fish, 2 live fish and a beautiful beta fish we also included in the gift as a "backup" if the goldfish died. If it wasn't funny enough, the pranksters came out and Bert and James decided it would be funny to leave the dead goldfish in our master bathtub. Oh, let the pranks begin!! Can't wait til next year! It's always so much work but it's oh so worth it after all is said and done!

Twelve Days of Christmas, 2011!!

We have had so much fun this Christmas season with the kids. Reilly and Braxton are getting to an age where they really seem to "Get it" and it has been so cool to do some real intentional things with them to help instill the true Spirit of Christmas, as well as some other just fun things!

For our 12 Days of Christmas this year, we started off at the Kannapolis Village Park. This was our first time there and it was so neat! Definitely something we'll have to remember for next year. There's a small train that goes around the whole park and they had lights/lighted scenes all throughout. There were singing bears, and amazing light show set to Transiberian Orchestra-type music, and Santa...for FREE! :) The kids had a blast just running around, dancing to the music, riding the train in the dark through the lights and watching the singing bears.






The next night we created a family Gingerbread house together. Always an adventure to see how much candy actually ends up on the house vs. in someone's mouth or just on the floor!


We did some homemade Christmas gifts the next day and then celebrated a friend's birthday and spent the night with Grandpa and Nanny the next day! Monday was by far my favorite day and something we will definitely be doing more of! We called it "Invisible Angels" day. In the morning, I talked to the kids about the angels in the Christmas story and how Angels help people and take care of them. We also talked about that angels are around us and we can't see them, just like Jesus is always with us and we can't see Him = invisible. Then we talked about celebrating Jesus' birthday and how we can't wrap up gifts to give Him but we could give Him other kinds of gifts... "Loving others and doing nice things" is what Reilly came up with! So, that's what we did! We set out on a mission to be "invisible angels" and to do some "random acts of kindness" for Jesus's birthday presents. Our first stop was the Dollar Store. I gave the kids two $1 dollar bills each and they had to hide them in the toy section so that a little boy/girl would find a $1 one day and be able to buy a special treat while there. The next stop was Chick-Fil-A where we were set to pay for the car behind us. As we were in line and saw a car pull up behind us, we said a prayer that God would bring them joy when we paid for their lunch. When we got to the window, I paid for the lady's order and told the guy to tell her we said "Merry Christmas!". Reilly was so excited and got out of her seat to turn around backwards and watch as the lady pulled up to the window. We saw her hold her money out of the window and then just stare at the guy who was obviously telling her we paid. Reilly got so excited and said, "Mommy! She just looked at our car and smiled!" Precious. Our next stop was Walmart. We had to get a few groceries and then we stopped by the gift card kiosk and got a Walmart giftcard. After we paid, we walked up and down the row of registers, looking for someone to give the giftcard to for them to use to pay for their groceries. I spotted a lady wtih 3 kids and an overflowing cart and suggest Reilly give it to her. Her instructions were to just walk up, hand the card over, say "Merry Christmas!" and walk away. She was a bit hesitant (shy!) and so I took her hand and we walked up to the lady together. The lady took the card, looked very confused, and then smiled so big when we just said "Merry Christmas!" and walked away. The best part of the whole day came next....as we were walking away, I heard one of the little girls say, "Mommy, who was that?!" and the lady just replied, "I think it was an angel." Wow. Priceless. After dinner, Shawn took R and B out for a few more random acts. They went to a coffee shop and bought some hot chocolate and then delivered it to one of the Salvation Army bell ringers outside of Lowes Foods. Then they taped quarters, candycanes, and a Christmas card the R made to the vending machines. And the last stop was to take a candy cane and a card to the ATM machine at B of A. It was such a fun and special day.
(Too bad everytime we go to CFA now Reilly wants to pay for the person behind us :)
I didn't take any pictures to capture this day, though I wish I had!!

The next included our annual light tour around the neighborhood with popcorn. We sure saw some pretty lights in Highland Creek! Yesterday, the kids and I baked and decorated some pretty sweet sugar cookies...as if we didn't already have enough cookies in the house! The rest of our 12 Days celebration include a trip to celebrate Christmas in Greensboro with DeeDee and Poppi and Uncle Brandon and Aunt Angel and our super special family Christmas Eve church service/Jesus Birthday Party night. This has been a really fun season for us....just wish Shawn and I didn't have SO much else going on with work (both of us) and school (Shawn) so we could have enjoyed it even more.

I know I just posted a gazillion pics of Layton, but I just have to keep posting them :) Afterall, he is my third and historically, the 3rd child hardly has any photos taken of them, so I just need to prove that wrong! These pictures were taken one morning when it was just he and I at home. I just wanted to capture some of his fatness (aka, cuteness!) and of course I got lots more smiles and precious expressions :)