My Favorite Four Plus One!

My heart belongs to these beautiful people~

Monday, December 31, 2012

Christmas in GA!

The Sunday before Christmas we celebrated with John's family in Thomasville....his mother made her amazing Christmas Spread of food and we ate and then enjoyed a bonefire outside and roasting marshmallow.  Papa and Nanny gave each grandkid a gift card to spend...they were all thrilled!


Christmas Eve 2012

Our Church does two Christmas Eve Services...one is a kid led family service.  J.D. was asked to lead a prayer for the service.  He was nervous but never thought of saying no.  John did such a great job of helping him prepare...not a scripted prayer but gave him bigger ideas of how his prayer might go.  He helped him walk through the steps of Worship, Thanksgiving, and praying for others...So John Daniel had an outline of sorts...then John told him to let the spirit move and just pray for what came to his mind.  John Daniel thanked God for the greatest gift of all...Jesus Christ....that was my favorite part. 

Pastor D with all the kids..

On Christmas Eve, John brined his turkey...he promised my dad a smoked turkey for Christmas


A new tradition maybe....got this idea from a friend.  I bought Christmas P.J.'s for the kids, popcorn, hot cocoa, and some movies for the kids to open on Christmas Eve....they were so excited!  We also played a game that was a "would you rather game" of sorts...it had 25 questions like Would you rather live in a giant gingerbread house or go for a ride on Santa's sleigh...it was cute and got the whole family talking and laughing!



We had fun eating an appetizer type dinner, popping popcorn, and watching movies.  It was one of the most relaxing Christmas Eve's I can remember!

Stockings all hung

cookies for Santa

Place mats for breakfast thanks to another Nee Naw craft...egg paint manger scenes

And I barricaded the kid's rooms and hallway with crepe paper!


The presents all ready for some really excited kids!

Emily's stack

J.D.'s stack

Molly's stack

Christmas Ballet

These aren't the greatest pictures because they were taken with my phone from a distance but they are beautiful to me...because my beautiful daughters did a beautiful job of dancing and worshiping God with ballet!  Each year our ballet studio showcases the classes at Christmas to give the parents an idea of how the girls are doing and how far they've come.  It's so strange seeing my oldest daughter up there dancing without any help from teachers on the side...they know the routine, it's graceful, and they look so old and mature now!




This was Molly's first time on stage....she did great!  she followed the teacher well and was very proud of herself!  So so so adorable!





Sunday, December 30, 2012

A little Pre-Christmas Field Trip

My friend had the great idea to go to the Florida History Museum and the Capitol one rainy day before Christmas....we took along some other kids to get them out of the house since their mom had been cooped up due to a broken foot...I had not been to the Florida History Museum since I was a student I do believe....going to "Grandma's Attic" brought back tons of memories!


Top of the Capitol


Cookie party

No Christmas is the same without a cookie decorating party:)

We got together with our friends from church and let all the kids go to town decorating cookies...I'm pretty sure Ms. B will be finding sprinkles on her floor for years to come!





Sweet Angel Ornaments

Guess what....this idea came from NEE NAW!  Not Pinterest!

At our December Book Club meeting after the kids talked about our December book, A Christmas Carol, we had all 28 kids make these cute ornaments...

Our Nee Naw had seen this craft at her school and told me how to duplicate them....I copied the hymn page from her Baptist Hymnal, the body is glued to a popsicle stick, the wings are doillies, the halo a pipe cleaner, and of course the sweet angel faces of our kids....They look really pretty on the tree!

Cousin Time...

On Christmas Eve we joined John's family over at his Grandmother's house to have some Christmas Eve Lunch.  I brought along a little craft idea....from....PINTEREST:)

We gave all 9 kids some green colored icing, an ice cream cone, some M & M's, and marshmallows. 


And they went to making cute little edible Christmas trees


Even the big kids enjoyed it:)









Molly' s Christmas Tree


Lauren's masterpiece...she worked the longest on making it just perfect!