Christmas Eve

A relaxing morning, the Elf left the kids her final good-bye note and Persaus was so excited that she got to hold Cherry. The final cotton ball went onto our Santa count down. This was the first year both Jayden and Persaus wrapped presents with me :-)) I know they are getting older and I want to stop time, however I have been looking forward to this, because as a child I helped my mom wrap presents.................. Then we went to a friends for dinner and a game of white elephant. The gift we brought was scratchers. Between the adults it was a great fight!!!! We didn't get home till late because the game went FOREVER. So we put the kids to bed and Brian put the cookies out this year. Next year I think we will stay home Christmas Eve to do all our family traditions :-))

Serving Others

This year we joined the ladies and there families from Church and the bible study I go to and served a Christmas meal. The night before we all got together at Luann's house to put all the Christmas goody bags together. I baked banana bread to go in the bags. A week before Brian and I hosted our 1st Holly Jolly Toy Drive (future post) and we were able to give toys to the kids that came and ate with there families. We served close to 70 people. A little boy touched my heart so I told him to take 3 toys!!!!!! The food we served was ham, green bean casserole, rolls, macaroni and cheese, and all different flavored pies. As a family serving was sooo touching to me and we look forward to doing it again every month.

Christmas Eve Eve......

Today was the most memorable day and set the tone for the next couple days. We started our day with red and green chocolate chip pancakes. We decided to go up to the big city to the main campus in Edmond Oklahoma to see the Christmas service live. We went to lunch after Church at Smash Brothers- yummy!!! Followed our friends and the 20 family members they had with them to Target ( I was soooo good and only bought Persaus gloves and a pack of gum!!! Then we went to a store called North Pole City, WOW!!!! This store is Christmas heaven :-))) I LOVE Hobby Lobby, however North Pole City out does Hobby Lobby (but the prices are pretty high!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE nutcrackers!!! I looked at the price and holy moly they are about 4 times what I paid :-( Then we ended our night at the festival of lights in Chikasha Oklahoma. Businesses of all kinds set up lights throughout the park around the lake and you can drive though, park and walk, go on carriage rides (we did carriage rides last year) air plane rides, and camel rides. We told Jayden and Persaus this year they could ride the camels. Our day was full of joy and to be surrounded by friends and family that share a passion for Christ like we do made the whole day even better!!!!!

Ice cream

Brian made the kids ice cream in our freezing cold weather....... But they LOVE ice cream!

Elf on the shelf

Last Christmas Aunt GG sent us the Elf and this year "Cherry" came back. Jayden doesn't believe in it, however he promised to play along and help make it fun and memorable for Persaus. Every night when we all went to bed "Cherry" reports to Santa at the north pole and when we wake up she is in a different spot each day and Persaus has to look around for Cherry! Persaus said "the elf is crazy this year". It was fun to wake up and see what kind of mischief she got into along with the sweet moments like leaving gingerbread houses and making Christmas streamer to help us decorate for Christmas. She also brought the kids there Christmas Jammie's this year. She ate almost all of the kids Halloween candy, played with clay, used the kids bathroom and well her tootsie roll poop looked really gross by the time we woke up the next morning. She was hanging from Persaus ceiling fan inside her undies, she did the splits at the top of our tree, toilet papered our tree, wrote her name with trix cereal, and made silly faces on one of our family pictures. Cherry hung Christmas lights around Persaus Barbie doll house, read books, played candy land with Persaus barbies and tried to decorate a cupcake the same day we did with Persaus class. She left a note that said the kids could hold her for a few minutes. We will see you next year Cherry!!!