'Tis the Season

I can't believe we are already over halfway through December!  It has been a busy month (which makes for a long post!) as it is the season for many fun things...

1. Giving

One of the couples in our small group organized an Operation Christmas Child packing party...we packed 100 boxes!  It was a fun event and I'm honored we were invited to be a part of it!

Bringing all of the boxes into Buckhead Church!

My office always adopts children from a local elementary school for Christmas.  This year I got a 4 year old boy!  He wanted transformers and a toy skate park :)

Presents for my little boy!

If you are looking for a way to serve others, especially if you have children, go here for some great ideas!  Kevin and I bought some Lindt chocolate angels to give to people - we gave one to the toll booth worker last night and she was so excited!  We both felt totally nervous (would she be a scrooge?  would she think we're silly?  would she not be allowed to take it?) so we were relieved when she got a huge smile and squealed and said "ooh I'm gonna eat this right now!"

2. Christmas music

Kevin and I both love Christmas music!  We went to Mount Paran's Christmas choir concert and it was awesome!  I love hearing a big choir, and the Falcons drum line even made a grand entrance to play Little Drummer Boy for the finale!

3. Driving around and looking at Christmas lights!

4. Baking!

I LOVE to bake so Christmas is a great excuse to do lots of that :)  If only I wouldn't eat so much of the stuff I bake!  This year I decided to make some baggies of treats for people.  My mother in law loves to bake too so when we spent the night with them this past Friday night it was a perfect time to get some baking done!

5. Christmas parties!

We kicked off the month of December with a Christmas party on Dec. 1st!  It was for ASHE, an engineering society Kevin is a member of.  Then our friends Colin and Kirby threw a great little party at their house.  We also had a white elephant party with our small group which was lots of fun!  Everyone came up with some pretty good $10 gifts - we got a Chick fil a calendar and a yummy candle.  My office party is coming up this Thursday so a picture of that is to come :)

Katie, Amanda, and I in front of Colin and Kirby's beautiful tree

 6. Christmas tree decorating

Kevin and I bought our Christmas tree from his dad who sells trees for the Optimist Club.  Very grateful we get to pick it out and then Kevin's dad drives it from Newnan for us (he's done this the past two years!)! We love playing some Christmas music and decorating the tree together - many of the ornaments have a great memory attached to them, especially our travel ornaments from Africa, Playa del Carmen (honeymoon), San Francisco and Yosemite (1st anniversary), New Orleans, and Dahlonega :)

Floyd LOVES the Christmas tree!  He gets so excited when we put it up.   He doesn't even mess with the ornaments or anything, he just likes to sleep underneath it and run back and forth from it.

7. Sending Christmas cards (and drinking hot apple cider)

We were pretty excited about our Christmas card this year!

Front (guess I'm liking the countdown theme lately!)

Back

8. Receiving Christmas cards!

We love getting Christmas cards in the mail!!

We still have room for some more :)

9. Christmas decorations

Hopefully we will have a house to decorate next year, but we still enjoy decorating our apartment!

Our stockings and Advent wreath...not really part of a denomination that says to do Advent, but I remember doing it when I was younger and Kevin and I really enjoyed starting this tradition last year.  It helps focus us in on the reason for the season and build up the anticipation of celebrating the birth of our Savior!

This is at Kevin's office - they all decorated their cubes and offices!  This one was the most impressive - he made his cubical into a little house out of wrapping paper, complete with a roof and door!  Kevin's office is very festive to say the least :)

10. Time spent with family

We are looking forward to spending lots of family time this coming weekend!  We've already got every hour of Friday through Monday planned out - going back and forth between events with my family and Kevin's family!  Holidays are always jam packed having both families in Newnan but I am thankful we get to spend time with both of our families.  We went to Alabama to visit my dad's dad's side of the family this past weekend - I'll just do a separate post on that :)

The list could go on, but this is all I have pictures of and this is probably too long already!

Merry Christmas!  I hope you and your family are enjoying this wonderful Christmas season!  

I Am Thankful...

This year's Thanksgiving left me feeling full and thankful!  I took off of work Tuesday and Wednesday so I could go down to Newnan early and have some time to relax and bake with my mom.  It was a great break filled with lots of family and friends - Mom, Maggie, and I went to LaGrange to visit Tiffany and Hayes and Charley and Molly (first cousins and their children) and almost got caught in a tornado, we celebrated Keith's (Kevin's brother) birthday at Georgia Shrimp Company in Peachtree City (yum!), baked lots of pies and delicious macaroni and cheese (you must make it - http://www.marthastewart.com/271998/perfect-macaroni-and-cheese) and other goodies with my mom, had Thanksgiving lunch at Kevin's grandmother's house with lots of family, Thanksgiving early dinner at my parents' house with my grandparents and a few family members who live in Alabama whom we don't see often, late night visit with Brianna and her family at her parents' house, visited grandparents in Alabama where we got to hang out with my cute almost-two-year-old cousin Reese and watched the GA Tech/Georgia game (darn!) and the Alabama/Auburn game (roll tide!), drove up to Buckhead to serve in Waumba Land and got to hear all about our little 4  year old's Thanksgivings (so sweet!), drove back down to my parents' house to see my cousins whom I hadn't seen in a long time, picked out our Christmas tree in Newnan where Kevin's dad sells them for the Optimist Club, and finally, drove back up to Atlanta and crashed!  I wouldn't exactly say it was restful but it sure was fun :)

At my parents' house we went around in a circle and said what we are thankful for...it is funny how every time this happens with any of my family, everyone is sooo thankful for Kevin!  I love it and it warms my heart but it is kinda humerous.  Finally when it got to my dad's cousin Joe's turn, he said something of the sort "well heck I guess I'm thankful for Kevin!  looks like we need to build him a shrine in the yard!"  Haha...but seriously, I am thankful for him too :)  One thing Kevin said in his "I'm thankful for..." spiel stuck out to me and has been on my heart for the past week - "We have more than we need and I'm thankful for all that we've been blessed with..."  We have more than we need?!  For real?  In the hustle and bustle of saving for a house, saving for a car, saving for Christmas, saving for a trip to Europe, sticking to a budget so that we can save for all these things and not spending too much on eating out, concerts, clothes, make up, ahhhh - it is hard to feel like we have more than we need!  It is something I know is true and certainly need to remind myself of more often.  Thank you Kevin for the reminder!  This Thanksgiving I sure felt like we have more than we need, and I'm thankful for that.

A few pictures to share from Thanksgiving week...

This is my cousin Tiffany's little boy Hayes.  He is sooo cute and such an entertainer.  I must also mention my cousin Charley's little girl Molly that we got to see on our trip to LaGrange who I wish I would have gotten a picture of because she was so cute - we found Charley down in his basement (due to the tornado) which is kinda his man cave with lots of camo and tools and such, so it was pretty cute to walk in to see his little 2 year old Molly sitting on his lap wearing only a blue tutu and nothing else (that is the ONLY thing she will wear these days!).  Fun times visiting the cousins in LaGrange!

Hayes gets his face painted every Tuesday night at Chick-fil-a!  He walks around like he owns the place!

When Hayes realized we were leaving he climbed out of the bath tub and started crying  "Mamie Mamie" which is what he calls my mom...heartbreaking but so cute!

This is at Kevin's grandmother's house.  This was actually last year because I didn't get a picture this year, but it's pretty much the same every year which is great :)  There were 18 of us there this year.

Kevin  hard a work at my parents' house  :)

Appetizers and looking at our wedding book before we ate!

Floyd joined the party too, in his Thanksgiving best

Only about half of all the food!

YUM!  This was on the cover of Southern Living and it was SO good!  Pumpkin cheesecake with candied pecans and praline sauce

The best part...my favorite is the chocolate pie with pecans...

This is my cousin Reese who we got to see when visiting my grandparents in Alabama!  She is quite the entertainer too!

Dogs make great Tech fans! :)

Us with my dad's brother's children who we hadn't seen in way too long!

I am thankful for great in laws!  They got Floyd this scratching post to have at their house because he loves the one at our apartment so much.  He loved this one too!  I didn't even think he could really fit in the top but when we woke up he was sleeping here :)

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving...Merry Christmas!!