Santa Claus Came To Town

On our way home from Nanny and Pops's house tonight, we saw Santa Claus and his sleigh high up in the sky. We could even see Rudolph's shiny red nose! It was all so exciting to see, but we had to rush home. We had to get to bed and go to sleep so that Santa Claus could come to our house.

And after we were all fast asleep, he DID come!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

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Presents and Yum Yums

My group at work surprised me with a birthday present on Monday morning. They got me this ice scraper mitt and a candle. I just loooooove this mitt. I think it's just the best thing since I spend a lot of time scraping ice off my car windows during the winter.

My friend Karen got me this elephant for my birthday. I love it!This morning, one of my co-workers brought in Christmas goody trays for all of us to take home. He claims that he helped make some of the goodies and that he made the tags that were on it. Do we believe this? I believe the part about the tags, but I don't know about the baking part. Ha!

Yum Yums

Goldbrick Candy

White Chocolate Peppermint Bark

Peanut Clusters

White Chocolate Pretzels

And a couple other things not pictured!

Tidbits

• I got a raise and a promotion at work today. Praise God and Merry Christmas to me!

• Emily is spending the night with Nanny and Pops to decorate Christmas cookies.

• Please pray for my sister-in-law's grandmother. She's in the hospital this week.

• Santa Claus is coming! So exciting!

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Not Me! Monday

This weekend, I spent a lot of time doing my Christmas cooking and wrapping gifts ... in addition to celebrating my birthday. During such busy times, a few little "Not Me!'s" are inevitable. So ....

• I did not turn 31 this past week. Ouch!

• I did not celebrate my birthday dinner (It's supper, c'mon, we live in the south!) at Chick-Fil-A. And I do not have this bad habit of squeezing honey onto each and every bite of chicken nugget directly from the packet. And we did not get a holiday shake for dessert. (How many calories per shake, Heather?) Ummm, yeah, we don't need that at all.

• I did not wrap some of Mike's Christmas presents while he was in the room. We did not have only a few rolls of wrapping paper between us at the time. I did not figure it wasn't such a big deal since all the gifts are stored in the same closet as his clothes. If he'd wanted to see what he was getting for Christmas, he had unlimited opportunities to do so before now.

• I did not make waaaaay more holiday goodies than were necessary. They were not all really good. I did not just have to have one teensy piece of something before breakfast this morning. It was not really hard to choose which something to pick.

• I am not avoiding the mention of what all I made so that I can take pictures of everything and post it on my blog in a day or two.

• I am certainly not leaving out a few choice Not Me!'s because they are just. too. bad. to admit.

Nope, Not Me!

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Cookies for Santa

This evening, Emily and I made Christmas cookies for Santa. We made snowmen, Christmas trees and stockings.

We rolled the extra dough into balls. And the dipped them into red or green sugar.

We decorated the cooled shapes with red icing, colored sugar, cinnamon dots and other goodies.
We finally got them all decorated.So proud of our hard work.
They're so pretty.

And SO good.

Hurry to our house, Santa.

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A Christmas Dress and a Delicious Cake

This morning, we went to church. Emily wore her (other) Christmas dress. I never know the proper protocol for holiday-wear. Is it the Sunday before the holiday or the Sunday nearest the holiday? Anyway, this is a picture of Emily in her Christmas dress. It has an empire waist and a fairly long skirt on it.

After church, we went to Outback Steakhouse to celebrate my birthday with Mike's family.

My cake was soooooooo yummy. It was a marble cake with lots of buttercream frosting. Mike did GOOD on this one! And .. even better .. we have plenty of leftovers. :)

Anyway, we all had a good time visiting and celebrating at lunch.

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Emily's Christmas Party

Yesterday, I went to Emily's Christmas Party at her preschool. Everyone brought something for the lunch. They had lots of good food.

Finger PB&J's, chips, veggies and dip, fresh fruit, Christmas tree cakes, fruit snacks, CapriSun to drink, etc ...

All her friends were there ... Gracie, Emily, Jackson and Grant. Her teachers, Mrs. Debbie and Mrs. Edith.

More of her friends ... Lundyn and her mom and Jackson.

Overheard in the car today ...

Emily: "Daddy, don't let Santa Claus take my Mama's jewelry."

Daddy: "Santa won't take Mama's jewelry."

Emily: "Daddy, don't let him take it. It's my Mama's jewelry."

Daddy: "Santa doesn't steal. He won't take Mama's jewelry. He'll just come to our house and put our presents under the tree and then leave."

Emily: "Don't let him take Mama's jewelry, Daddy"

Daddy: "Okay, I won't let him take it."

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Emily's Christmas Program

Update #4: I also uploaded a new "White Christmas" video on the post from earlier this week. Click here to go see it. (The second video on that post is the new one.)

Update #3: A couple pictures posted at the bottom.

Update #2: Wait! I found a fourth video! It's also posted below. :)

Update #1: Revised to all ALL THREE videos are posted now.

We went to Emily's Christmas Program last night at her preschool. The kids all did really good. I got several short videos of her group, but I'm STILL having a hard time uploading them. I re-started the video recording every 30 seconds, but I guess the file size is still too large. *disappointed*

Okay the videos are posted now. Emily is the third little girl from the left with the dress that's black on top and white on bottom with a red bow. The little girl to the left of Emily is her "best friend" Lundyn. The boy to the right of Emily is one of our Cubbies kids, Jackson.

I also got a couple pictures from last night.

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She's Dreaming of a White Christmas

Okay I finally got one of Emily's videos posted. It's much shorter than the one I wanted, but I could not get the good one to upload. The other one was about a minute long and soooo cute. She's sitting in front of Heather's Christmas tree. I hope I can get some more video at her program tomorrow night. I'll just have to remember to keep it SHORT. I hope you enjoy!

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Unpacked, Organized and Decorated

Emily and I had a fun weekend with Heather and Stephen. I think we all did a good job getting things unpacked, organized and decorated. Here is our weekend in pictures.

We unpacked a lot of wedding gifts.

Emily helped take the tags off the napkin rings. Looks like she's really trying hard, eh? Emily did a lot of playing with Stephen. She watches him a lot. And Emily did a lot of hiding in alllll of Aunt Heather's closets.And we colored in a new Crayola Color Wonder book. And we organized all kinds of things and them into clear plastic containers.

And we unpacked lots of boxes and bags.

Mom got picked to climb the ladder to put decorations on top of the kitchen cabinets.

One morning, Stephen cooked us pancakes for breakfast ...

... while his little friend watched and played nearby.

This is Heather's mantle that we (not me) decorated.Stephen helped hang this large picture on the wall in the living room. This is part the decorating that we did in the kitchen .. umm, minus the bright yellow ladder. And another part of the kitchen.
Well there were several other things that are not pictured, but you get the idea. We hated to have to leave. And somewhere between their house and ours, I lost a hubcap off my car. Argh!!! Hate it when things like that happen!

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