Miscellaneous Christmas

We tried to fill our Christmas season with lots of fun things this year, while also slowing down enough to actually enjoy time together. We also tried to be very intentional in our teaching of the Christmas message to our girls. They memorized a couple verses from the Christmas story and we did our traditional Nativity advent calendar. We also did some crafts and baking to highlight why we do some of the things we do at Christmas - green Christmas tree snow cookies to talk about why we put up a Christmas tree (connecting it to the cross) and wreaths made out of sparkly pipe cleaners and jingle bells to talk about God's love being eternal, with no beginning or end.

Here are some other snipets from December:

At the beginning of the month, I was blessed to attend our church's women's Christmas event with two of my dear friends, Dottie and Angie. We enjoyed the loads of decorations the church puts up for the event, a lovely sit-down dinner, followed by a Christmas message. It was a great night to enjoy some adult time!

Jayden loved sporting her Christmas shirts from MawMaw Bill. She also loved redecorating the Christmas tree, as you can tell from the random placing of the ornaments on the tree behind her:)

The girls enjoyed an evening with friends - they made a tent and watched a movie in the living room while enjoying their pizza and cookies!

Early in the month, Addy and Jayden worked hard (and secretly) all evening to make and wrap me a special Christmas present. They were so excited to give it to me that they didn't want me to wait until Christmas, so I opened it early. It included some crafts Addy made at school, a map they drew of how to get to our house, some candy, and a letter that said, "Mommy, you are the best mommy ever." It was the best present I got this year - precious!

We took the girls to Grand Prairie Lights - a drive through Christmas light display with over 4 million lights. I have wanted to take the family to this since we moved to Texas, but it just never worked out. It was a blast. We made hot chocolate to take with us on the drive and stopped to enjoy the carousel they had set up. We even got a peek at Santa, but the girls were a little shy to actually go sit on his lap. The funniest thing that happened that night was when Jayden fell asleep halfway through the light display and we heard a "splash" in the back. Her hands went limp, of course, and her hot chocolate spilled all over. Thank goodness for plastic floormats!

Isaiah and Nathan at the light display.

Jayden and I had a marthon morning of baking while Addy was at school and Isaiah was napping. We fixed cookies for the PBT Christmas party and other goodies to give to friends and take on our trip north to see family.

Although I don't have any pictures from the PBT Christmas party, it was a wonderful evening of fun. We got to enjoy a yummy meal, catch up with good friends we don't get to see often enough, and the kids got to do a craft and play with their friends too.

Another event we didn't get pictures at was the "Breakfast with Jesus" at church. It was really fun to see the girls interacting with the Christmas story - especially Jayden, since this is the first year that she's really been able to articulate much about it.

We really enjoyed our pre-Christmas festivities in Dallas. More to come in a future post about our crazy long road trip to Kentucky and West Virginia for Christmas week.