Children's Christmas Program

Our children got to participate in a short Christmas program for our church one Sunday night. They sang 5 songs, and each of my kids got to sing a solo. They both did a great job. Here they are before it started.

During the performance:

I guess the funniest part was when Bekah says, "Mommy, I need a kleenex," and came running off the stage in the middle of the performance. Mommy was directing the songs, so Daddy came to the rescue. Yes, we got that part on video! We can embarrass her terribly when she's a teenager!

Christmas Envelopes

This year a friend of mine sent me a link to a page explaining the idea of opening an envelope each day in December leading up to Christmas. I thought the kids would enjoy it, so we tried it. Each day there is an envelope to open with instructions inside for something special to do that day. On the first day, the instrucitons were to decorate all 25 envelopes. Here are some pictures of that.

Some of the other fun things were: attending Christmas parties, making Christmas gifts, going to see Christmas lights, reading Christmas books, drinking hot chocolate, etc. One day their envelope told them to give a Christmas gift to the birds, so we strung popcorn for our tree outside and made bird feeders.



A lot of the activites listed we would have done anyway, but it was nice to throw some extra fun things in there. And it helped hold me accountable to do the things I wanted to do with the kids and not put them off in order to get other stuff done. The kids really had fun with this, so hopefully we can do it again next year. A couple of days after Christmas Bekah asked, "when are we going to open our envelope?" I explained to her that it was only for 25 days in December, and then we stopped and there were no more envelopes. She said, "But I want us to open one every day, until we're dead!"

More Thanksgiving

We got to see Todd's family at Travis and Jackie's house in Algood.

I'm not too sure about Tessa and Justin....

Everyone enjoying the theater room! We played some Rock Band!

Lovely, Travis!

Bekah and Jackie got a birthday cake!

Bekah gives the cake a thumb's up!

One of Bekah's birthday gifts. It is lots of fun!

Travis needed a haircut, so he got an early birthday present - clippers. Then Todd gave him a haircut!

Thanksgiving

So, I'm finally getting some Thanksgiving pictures on here! We drove down to Columbia on Wednesday evening and celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday with my family. On Friday, we had a birthday party for Bekah and my Dad and then we drove to Cookeville to celebrate with Todd's family.

Me and Bekah took turns climbing Mom and Dad's tree!

Grandpa looks happy with his grandkids!

Thanksgiving dinner...yummy!

We played some Guitar Hero after dinner!

Todd as "The lunchlady serving mashed potatoes!"

The birthday party for Bekah and Dad.

We had a great visit, but as always, it's never long enough!

Christmas

I came across this article through a friend's blog. I can relate to this so much! Merry Christmas!

Bekah is 5!

I can't believe my little girl is 5 already!

This is how she looked when she woke up on her birthday morning!

As soon as she woke up, she was ready to open presents!

Here she is with her new Sleeping Beauty doll and bed. She also got the Sleeping Beauty movie which she watched on her birthday.

Daddy had to leave and go to work....how sad.

She wanted cinnamon toast for breakfast.

For dinner we ate at Cracker Barrel. This picture was taken when all the waiters and waitresses sang "Happy Birthday" to her. After I took this picture, she got very embarrased that everyone was singing to her.

They brought her this chocolate cobbler and ice cream that she loved. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes after each bite. Silly girl!

We also travelled to Grandmom and Grandpa's house on her birthday since the following day was Thanksgiving. It was the perfect ending to the perfect day!