Chaks Mix: Holly Jolly Christmas

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that everyone had wonderful holidays!

Painting Christmas Cookies- the first year we've done it. Meredith loved it!

Once again this year Meredith participated in the Christmas program at church. I use the word participate lightly, because geesh was it hard to get her up there to practice! She was one of the three magi this year and had 4 lines in the play. She knew her lines perfectly, but again, would not practice. Frank took her to the final practice and she wouldn't even go into the sanctuary to watch the other kids. Just a wee bit of stage fright. The day of the program though, she did fine. She said her lines, all but the last one that I think the play directors were fearful just wasn't going to happen since she wouldn't say them before. In the end, I was proud of her, mostly because she was so scared but she got up there and did it. That's essentially the whole point- practicing getting up in front of people and overcoming fears. And of course, delivering that most important Christmas message of Jesus birth!

Magi getting ready

Shew! She did it!

Meredith was teetering this year whether Santa was real or not. We had a holiday party with people from work, and Terry was mentioning how he dresses up as Santa for the nieces and nephews, but they are starting to catch on. Meredith was in the room, and I thought his wife was going to kill him! She did a good little cover story and we thought all was well. There was a pause in conversation and Meredith said “Mommy, Santa’s not real, is he?” I did my typical “What do you think?” reply and she said no, but later said yes. I’m alright with that, and I’m sure Terry was glad not to be at fault for telling Meredith the Santa secret!

We spent Christmas Eve at my parents. They had a big surprise in store for us that they coordinated with Meredith and my two nieces. They did a whole Christmas pageant for us, complete with 3 costume changes. They were angels, shepherds, and wise girls too!

Angels

cousins!

Christmas morning we woke up in our new house. We put the tree in the dining room this year because we don’t have a dining room table and there wasn’t a bunch of room in the family room that wasn’t close the fireplace. Meredith left out one cookie, milk, and 8 mini carrots for the reindeer. This year we specified that Santa brings one big gift for under the tree and her stocking, and the rest are from mom and dad. Hey, we work hard to buy and wrap those toys! Why should Santa get all the credit, the lazy bum! Her big gift this year was a Barbie bike. She loves it! It has a little pink plastic bike on the handlebars where Barbie can ride along with her!

leaving milk, cookies, and carrots out for Santa

New Bike!

Stockings all filled up!

Hugs for the Fur Real pet- a cat she named Oreo because it's black and white

Princess pencil case- it was a big hit- if you touch buttons little drawers pop out

Slipe and Slide for the summer time!

The gift that was a hit for the whole family was her sing-a-ma-jig dolls. They sing songs and harmonize and really are fun little things!

Sing-a-ma-jigs!

We had Christmas dinner at our house, prepared by my mom and sister, which was delicious as usual.

Christmas dinner

My plate- beef tenderloin, fancy mashed potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, corn casserole, brussel sprouts with cream sauce, homemade rolls

The day after Christmas we headed to Frank’s family and celebrated with them. It’s always fun having the 6 little nieces and nephews running around. I’m sure they enjoy it too and hopefully will remember it for years to come!

anticipating gift opening

duh, Aunt Kristen! I'm playing my new DSi game!

I want to go first! Meeeee!

up close and personal

princess barbies!- pointing out hers is different from the other girls because it has Rapunzel

squeeze in there cousins!

present time!

Yo! Yo! What up? W to the V

the youngest

We stayed there for 5 days- we hadn’t been there for a while and we are so lucky that our work is closed from Christmas Eve through until January 2. We were able to visit with Frank’s parents and family, and bee-bop around the town. Once night while the boys went out, Frank’s sister, her friend and I took all of the kids to McDonald’s and then to see Christmas lights at Oglebay on a trolley. We were exhausted by the end of the night, but they had a great time!