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I convinced Julia, Madi and Avery to go shopping with me this morning. We’ve been busy and I haven’t had time to hit the after Christmas sales yet. We try to do a good bit of Christmas shopping for the next year during the after Christmas sales. It saves a little money and a lot of time for next December! They don’t really get in to looking at Christmas stuff but had been promised a milkshake from Jack in the Box and that is probably the only reason they went. We left just after 10 am and started at Target. There wasn’t much in the Christmas section, so we tried Michael’s and Hobby Lobby. After limited success, we finally made it to Old Navy where I actually had returns to make. Everyone got something at Old Navy and then we went to have lunch at Jack in the Box. While they were eating their milkshakes, they decided they were done with shopping. I still had to exchange something at Aeropostale and wanted to check out Tuesday Morning and Wal-Mart. I knew my parents had my nephew at a salon nearby getting his hair cut, so we dropped by to see if they could ride home with them while I continued shopping. Bailey was with them and she decided she would go with me because she heard the other girls had gotten to pick out something and got a coke, candy, and a milkshake. Little did she know that we would go in 8 stores, the post office and spend 4 hours shopping. She enjoyed having some alone with mommy time, and she complained a lot less than the other three had. We were able to finish my exchanges and found some nice things for really good deals at Tuesday Morning, Kohl’s and Wal-Mart. She also got to pick out some new sunglasses and got a Dr. Pepper and Skittles for her efforts. She also got to pick out a gift for Avery’s birthday. I saw a thing or two that I could’ve bought for Bailey’s birthday, but I’ll have to go back out for those later.
We got home just in time to see Avery helping Nana make pink cupcakes. She got the book Pinkalicious for Christmas. It is about a girl who adored everything pink and ate too many pink cupcakes. She woke up bright pink herself and stayed that way until she began eating green vegetables. Avery is all into eating the pink cupcakes, but hopes she won’t turn pink because she wouldn’t want to eat all the green vegetables to get back to normal.
I think after supper, I will eat my pink cupcake and be ready for an early bedtime. Shopping was fun but wore me out! We’ll be heading to Augusta on Wednesday morning to do Christmas all over again with Thayer’s parents. I hope to get in a little shopping there, too…and by then, all the Christmas stuff will be 75-90% off!
Here’s some pictures of Avery with her pinkalicious cupcakes!
We celebrated Christmas with my parents and my brother, sister-in-law and nephew last night. This is the first time in about four years that we all stayed in one house. Michael and Vanessa lived in Anderson four years before moving to Florence so usually when we came for Christmas, they were here during the day but had their own house to go to at night. This year, we’re all back at mom and dad’s house and we’ve even added two children (Avery and Matthan) since the last time. It has been fun and we’re lucky my parents haven’t decided to down-size yet, so they still have four bedrooms. We all had a blast together with new toys and the Wii Fit.
I hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas! We have a rule around our house that no one can get up before 7:30. We used to have an 11:30 pm Christmas Eve service, so we had to make sure they were rested enough. Even though we don’t have a late service on Christmas Eve anymore, we have kept the 7:30 rule. The girls were very excited about what Santa brought them.
After playing with their stuff for a while, they opened their stocking stuff before breakfast. We have a brunch menu that we have had for at least 7 years: a breakfast casserole and caramel Christmas rolls (like monkey bread). The girls have never been very fond of it–the rolls, especially–but we keep having them because they are delicious and I hope eventually they will come to like it and want to continue the tradition with their own girls. I think Avery and Madi actually like the rolls now and Bailey and Julia didn’t complain as much as usual. After breakfast, we opened our gifts and had a lazy day. Thayer helped Bailey and Julia load their iPods with some music and I put Avery’s doll playpen, stroller and swing together.
We also had our traditional dinner about 3 pm. We have tacos on Christmas. Since we always go out of town for a week starting on the 26th, I don’t want to have anything that would leave leftovers and we’ll be eating ham, turkey and the “normal” Christmas meals at both of our parents over the next week.
We’ve packed for our trip and cleaned up a little bit and are getting ready to call it another Christmas. Avery actually fell asleep with Thayer on the couch watching “A Christmas Story.” Here’s a video for you to see–or more like hear–what it was like at our house this morning (you might want to turn your volume down a little!). Also, the video of them seeing Santa at Crabtree Valley Mall.
We went with some friends last night to see the Meadow Lights. I don’t know where Meadow is exactly, but we found it. It was a really fun place…obviously, lots of lights and you could ride a train to see them. They also had a carousel, concessions, an old fashioned candy shop and you could see Santa. They also had some scenes set up that depicted the last supper, the nativity, the three crosses, and other things such as Santa visiting sleeping children, Betsy Ross making a flag, etc. I had heard people talk about it for years, but we had never gotten out there. We waited about 15-20 mintues just to get into the parking lot. From the amount of people we saw, I believe they make enough money during December to take the rest of the year off. I had planned to take pictures, but I never did because I didn’t want to miss any of the displays. If we weren’t already in the Christmas spirit, we were after last night! There’s nothing like bundling up with extra socks, gloves, hats and scarves and seeing Christmas lights!
I really enjoy Life Groups at GCC. We are in our third year of groups and each year we have a very different group than we had the year before. We are always sad when we have to move on, because we form close friendships with our group members. But, we always are able to remain friends with those group members and make new friends with our new groups. We just had our Christmas party with this year’s group last night. One of our group members invited us to have the party at her home, and we were super excited to accept her offer. She lives about 12 miles toward Grantham from Cherry Hospital, so it was quite a trip. Her house is a 1806 farmhouse. We all had a great time and our host even found a new home, maybe, for a stray dog she has had for close to a year. She has tried to find a home before but hadn’t had any luck, and one of the couples in our group fell in love with the dog and are going to give it a try. We took some pictures but they turned out a little fuzzy, but you can see most of our group. Rob and Stacy had company in town and Nathan was also missing.
Doing life together is what we say about our groups and last night, we did life together, Christmas goodie style! Yum yum!
We broke down yesterday and went to Raleigh to Crabtree Valley Mall on the Saturday before Christmas. We had been wanting to take Avery to see Santa…its been a Stamper tradition since Julia was 4 months old to see the Crabtree Santa. But, we’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks and never made it. We had a gift certificate to The Cheesecake Factory too, so I bribed Thayer with that. The traffic really wasn’t much worse than it is on any Saturday in Raleigh and that mall is always pretty crowded. The only problem we had was that we happened to be in line to see Santa when the time came for him to take his 30 minute which was closer to a 45 minute break. So, we waited an hour and a half total. But, he is the best! He takes his time with each child and Avery loved him! It was the first time EVER (she even cried on her first Christmas when she was just 9 months old!) that she sat willingly with Santa and when we were done, she turned around to hug him. We bought a picture, but I forgot to scan it at church, so here is the one I took with our camera. You can’t see Bailey or Julia vey well because they were sitting on the floor in front of him. They really (especially Julia) didn’t even want to go talk to him, but I made them.
We hosted the GCC Staff and their families for a Christmas dessert last night. It was lots of fun. The kids were able to decorate their own gingerbread house cookies and make reindeer food. The adults played “Don’t forget the lyrics…Christmas version” (Rob won by filling in 33 of 35 blanks), had a Siamese Gift Wrap (they had to wrap a gift with one arm behind their spouses’ backs giving them one of each of their arms to use–Wes and Marcey won), and they had a memory game where they looked at a tray with 16 items relating to Christmas and then had to write down as many as they could remember when we took the tray away (the winner was Marcey with 14 items!).
The main event, of course, was the food! We had various cookies and candies, Death by Chocolate, Orange Italian Cream Cake, Red Velvet Cheesecake, Peppermint Bundt cake, and Christmas punch. I had told everyone they might want to skip supper. We enjoyed spending the evening with our friends! Thanks to Brittany Harper who came and watched the kids while we played our games.
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| Make a Smilebox scrapbook |
Julia had her first semi-formal last night. (That makes me feel really old–except for the fact that she also lost a tooth in the same day!) The Goldsboro Cotillion hosted the Holly Ball. She looked beautiful! I have been a little frazzled by the whole experience, though, because some people allow their MIDDLE SCHOOLERS to wear sequin or beaded strapless gowns, tiaras, long gloves, etc. to these things. Others get manicures and have their eyebrows waxed before going. What do they have to look forward to when they are finally old enough to go to their Junior/Senior Prom? I did carry Julia to my hairdresser to have her hair fixed. I am no good with hair…unfortunately since I have 4 daughters! If I can’t fix my own hair in 2 minutes, the cut is no good for me! She had fun but didn’t get home until 11 pm…on a school night. Good thing today was the last day before Christmas and only a half day!
If I get the first daughter raised before she kills me, we’ll be lucky. I made my mom’s (actually, its my grandmother’s) recipe for chocolate balls, a family favorite, for the first time this weekend. Julia has always loved them and asked if I could make some for her class on Thur. I told her I would, not really thinking that I had already volunteered to make cupcakes for the students tonight. Then, Madi brought home a note on Monday asking for her to bring cookies for her party on Thurs. When she showed it to me, she said, “Mom, can we do homemade cookies?” I’m not sure if she meant I don’t normally do homemade, or if the other moms who have sent things recently didn’t do homemade. So, I vowed I would have very special cookies for her too. Then, I had two days of my preschool program and I’ve already begun making a few things for the dessert we are hosting for the church staff on Friday. The cupcakes were made, Madi’s cookies were made, and Thayer helped me make Julia’s chocolate balls just now. By the way, she came home today and told me that the two classes in her team were combining for the party, therefore she needed enough for 52 children! I’m thinking I’m up for “Mom of the Year.” (Thank goodness Bailey only had to carry $2 for her party and Avery’s teacher handled everything for her’s!)
One day’s worth of baking
The snowmen cookies for Madi’s class
Today’s program was different than yesterday’s. I knew the Tues./Thurs. classes typically are not as well behaved and are less mature than the Mon./Wed./Fri. classes. One mom said, “today’s program was more ‘animated’ than yesterday’s.” One of the two year old classes had several escapees who ran back to their parents and then they tried to come back and take over the microphone. There was also one less four year old class, who are usually my best singers. But, it was still cute and for those who didn’t see the program yesterday, they didn’t know how good it could have been. The Kindergarten students, who were the fairytale characters telling the nativity story, did a fantastic job. I think there are some budding actors in that group! Here’s a picture of the cutest cow ever!
