Warning! LONG post!
I don’t know about you all, but since Thanksgiving it seems like life sped up and a week later it was Christmas! Time sure has flown! So this post will emcompass the events leading up to Christmas as well as the big day! :)
First, this is Lillian watching her video that Santa emailed just to her!! You can view her video here – http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/watch/m8sR4WsDwoiTfLSibjTX1AQ
We went on our 12th family day outing, post on that soon.
We got an Elf on the Shelf, which we adore. On the way home we began thinking of names for our new addition. We took the top 8 and put them in Matt’s hat. Then we sat our elf right next to the hat and she worked her magic and "made" Natalie pick out the name she wanted for herself. Everyone, please meet Snowflake, our Elf on the Shelf.
We even put up some more lights this year!
Of course, the kids admired our lights as well as the neighbors. :)
Christmas Eve we started it off with making cinnamon rolls and cider and we spread out opening the family presents throughout the day. This way we could give each gift some undivided attention!
I got a few pictures of the girls before lunch
Here’s a recap of our Christmas eve and Christmas morning. It was a very relaxing day with a yummy Christmas Eve dinner of roast, collards and corn bread. We opened up the rest of our family presents, put out our reindeer food, set out our milk and cookies and tucked the munchkins into bed so Santa could make his trip to our house. Lillian was the first to wake up and she was beyond excited! I barely got everyone else up before she tore into her Santa presents!
After a few hours of playing we headed to my parents house. Usually Christmas is our time. Our time to spend it as a family and just enjoy the short while we are actually home at the same time on vacation. This year both my brothers were spending their Christmas at my parents. We headed up to see them as a family for the day so we could spend some time with everyone and Lillian and Natalie could enjoy their cousins for the day and we could enjoy a few meals together as the Traver/Ross clan.
The next day we headed back to Florida. John and Andrea decided to come down as well and I got to spend one more day with them before they headed to see Chris in Mississippi. We ended up going to Pensacola and taking some family pictures for them and walking thru downtown Pensacola.
2011 with its challenges, it did allow us to see each member of our immediate family. I’m thankful for all the memories we’ve had in the rollcoaster ride from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Now it’s time to put away the Christmas decorations and make some New Year goals and resolutions.