Sunday, December 18, 2011

'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!  

3 comments:

  1. Love it Natalie!!! Y'all are the cutest couple ever. And thanks for the sweet shoutout to Lil Light O Mine. So proud of you two and your chocolates. :) Send me your address again for our card. I am way to quick to toss the envelopes.

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  2. Thanks Courtney! Sending you our address via fb message now...

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  3. This is the sweetest way to keep up with my children. I just love it!

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