Christmas Day we celebrated at four different places with each of our families. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning in Crossville with Bryan's parents. We woke up extra early and opened presents and ate a huge Christmas breakfast full of steak sandwiches, casseroles, and cinnamon rolls. On our way back we made a pit stop in Knoxville to visit Bryan's grandparents. We stopped in Kingsport to celebrate with my dad and then traveled to our last place for Christmas dinner at my mom's. We traveled in the rain the entire day but we are so blessed and thankful for all of our family celebrations. It was a packed filled day but so much fun. Christmas morning at Bryan's parents house Card games on Christmas Eve Stocking stuffers are one of my favorite parts about Christmas, esp. in big stockings Christmas at my Dads Auggie got spoiled by all of his grandparents on Christmas Day with toys and treats Christmas at my Moms Christmas with my sister Sis and I showing Bryan some love We ended Christmas Day with a little party at our house with some of our closest friends
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There are only TWO days left until Christmas and I'm filled with joy. Christmas is by far my favorite holiday! I believe one of the reasons that makes Christmas so special (after celebrating the birth of Jesus) is being about to spend the holidays with your loved ones and share/make new memories. One of the things I look forward to most during this holiday is family traditions. My family has created some pretty awesome traditions of their own that I will always continue, but look forward to making some new family traditions one day when I have little ones. 1.) ABC family's countdown to 25 days of Christmas. We have always watched the count down to Christmas as soon as it begins. I remember when I was little (before you could just press the "guide" button on your remote to see what was coming on t.v.) we would go to the grocery store and buy the "T.V. Guide book" for the week so we could see which Christmas movies were playing. Hallmark also does some pretty great Christmas movies. On Christmas Eve we would all watch whatever movie was playing as a family, then my sister and I would have to get in bed early since we knew Santa was coming and he wouldn't come to our house until we were asleep. This year ABC has two great movies playing Christmas Eve night... NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION beginning at 6:30 and ELF comes on right after that at 8:45. 2.) Opening one present on Christmas Eve. Since I can remember (myself included) my family can not keep presents a secret. As soon as we buy something for one another we want to give it to the other person right away. We have always made it a tradition to open one present from under the tree of our choice on Christmas Eve right before we go to bed. I believe my sister and I would always go for the biggest box. 3.) Christmas morning breakfast! The first thing Christmas morning we would run to our Christmas tree and open all of our gifts in our pajamas then eat a yummy breakfast. After presents at our house we would load up the car (still in our pajamas) and go to our grandmothers house-she would make a big breakfast filled with gravy and biscuits, casseroles, and more. 4.) Baking on Christmas Eve. It has been a tradition among majority of families to leave out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve for Santa and his reindeer. My mom, sister, and I would always make some yummy cookies on Christmas Eve and lay them out for Santa and write him a special note. I knew I could always count on having lots of sweet treats on Christmas day. My Mimi would always make her delicious apple crisp and I would have some Christmas afternoon when I would go to her house. This year we are spending Christmas Eve at Bryan's parents house and I spoke with his mom yesterday about baking something on Christmas Eve. Since she has already made some of her famous sugar cookies, I asked her if we could bake Apple Crisp after our Christmas dinner. I look forward to making it since its been forever since the last time I smelt Apple Crisp baking in the oven. Baking is a must on Christmas Eve! 5.) The countdown to Christmas morning. As soon as Thanksgiving was over my mom would get out all the Christmas decor and one of my favorites was the Christmas Countdown. My sister and I would run in from school and rush to change the day to make sure everyone knew it was one day closer to Christmas. This is a great way to get everyone in the house excited and ready for Christmas day. I now have my own Christmas Countdown at my house and often forget to change it... My sister was over the other day and changed it for me and asked how I could possibly forget to change the days. Now that there is only a couple days left, there will be no forgetting! This has always and will continue to be a family tradition.
This past weekend we traveled down to Georgia to celebrate Christmas with one set of our parents! With the weather being so warm lately it took us by surprise on Friday afternoon when it began to snow flurry outside. Of course we didn't think much about it considering it was just a few flurries. We headed to Georgia after Bryan got off work, about 45 minutes into our trip we hit stand still traffic. The snow was coming down right outside of Asheville as we were stuck on a bridge going up the mountain. Our 3 hour drive turned into a 5 hour drive due to the snow storm/black ice that hit just as we were passing through. This random snow storm encouraged us to pack extra water, food, and warm clothes next time we travel during cold weather. Once we arrived in Georgia our weekend was filled with love, family, homemade hot cocoa, and of course celebrating Christmas. Saturday we started our day off right by shopping for a little boy from Bryan's parents Church. He had a very particular list of things he wanted which consisted of all things Star Wars, Avengers, and Super Hero galore. Little did we know how hard it was to shop for boy toys. Thank goodness for google! Bryan and his dad would google image a toy and then all four of us would go down the aisles looking for them. We managed to get the majority of things off of his list. We all know there will be a very happy little boy come Christmas morning. Saturday night the family headed to one of our favorite restaurants on the square of their town. We all had a great time enjoying each others company over some yummy drinks and a delicious meal. When we got back home we all celebrated Christmas and exchanged gifts by the fire with Christmas music playing in the background. We had such a wonderful time filled with non stop laughter and great gifts from Santa (one gift included was a Garth Brooks live CD- which I had to listen to the entire ride home, thanks Brit!). Thankful for these great Christmas memories and all the love we share!
Since the beginning of December I have been on the go non stop. I haven't had time to sit down and think about my blog between work, my birthday, Christmas, and among the many other things going on during this month. The weather has also been amazing lately, considering I am a warm weather girl, I love the 65 to 70 degree weather we have been receiving here in East Tennessee (although I wouldn't mind for some snow on Christmas day). Since the weather has been so warm we've been trying to do things outside..this past Saturday we went on an amazing hike which I will hopefully be able to write about later this week. For now, I wanted to do an update on things gone on so far during this busy month of December. The weekend before my my birthday, Bryan threw me a little b-day shin dig at our house and invited some friends over then we all went out for dinner down town that evening. My actual birthday happened to fall on the same day as one of the fashion shows that my girlfriends and I always watch so one of my best friends made me dinner and a couple of the girls came to watch the show at my house. Bryan and I celebrated my birthday together the next night with a yummy chicken/bacon/potato dish he cooked up for me! I'm currently still celebrating as I have two different dinners this week with family for my birthday! We have been decorating our house for Christmas and finally completed our Christmas tree. This is the first year we went all out on decorating since last year we didn't have much decor. We waited until the day after Christmas when everything went on sale to go buy all the supplies needed for future Christmas's. This included our tree, last year I found it pretty unpleasant to celebrate Christmas without an actual tree, so as soon as the trees went on sale we snatched one up from Home Depot. We still have a lot more we need but we will gain more throughout the years. This time of the year I get super excited about checking the mail. I'm a huge fan of family Christmas cards and love to see all my friends and family's cards. We've started a little collection already in our kitchen. This year I was so happy with how our cards turned out! It was the first year we have been a family of three and Auggie our pup was incorporated and did so great (being a little generous here) the day of our pictures. Any time the photographer would say "treats" you could get his attention. We've also been to a couple of tacky Christmas sweater parties this year. We went to two this past weekend. Bryan had his works Christmas dinner on Friday and our friends throw a big tacky sweater/ gift exchange party every year. You can always count on these parties to be fun! We've had such a fun month of December and have so much more to look forward to...only 10 days until Christmas (but who's counting)!!!!!!
The countdown is officially on for Christmas. I've been wanting to post some of my favorite pictures from a fall/winter photo session I had a few weeks ago but decided to wait until I sent out my Christmas cards for this year. We've made it a tradition to send out Christmas cards to our loved ones ever year since our first year of marriage. We've never had professional pictures made for our cards but since we now have a pup and one of my friends started a photography business I figured it was a great time to get some professional pictures done for fall and winter. For anyone looking for a fun filled professional photo shoot look up Shareece Hollifield Photography on Facebook! Shareece has a great eye for beautiful pictures and is so much fun to work with!!
I have a lot of favorites so there will be a bunch of photos..... |
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