A Very, Merry and Busy Christmas Season (Part 1)

Once Thanksgiving dinner was over, I started decorating the house and yard for Christmas.  Opa helped me put the lights up on the trees and the bushes in the front yard.  We opted to NOT hang lights on the house this year due to budget constraints and fear of heights.  Next year, we'll light up the house Griswold family style. 

 

Then I had Bobby take down the 5 boxes of Christmas decorations and began decorating the house.  I didn't realize how well-behaved Piper had been the past Christmases with all the decorations within kid reach.  Brynn had some sort of vendetta against this penguin family I had on the coffee table and would knock them over every chance she got. 

The sweet little penguin family.  They don't look so menacing, do they?
 

Piper managed to follow my only rule (and in retrospect, Brynn followed it too...sort of): "You can only play with (not manhandle) the soft Christmas decorations not the hard ones." However, Piper couldn't resist the village scene and decided to add her little touches here and there. 

TRICERATOPS!  Aghh!!

 That weekend, we went shopping for our Christmas tree and hoped to have it delivered, but in the suburbs everyone ties their tree to the roof of their car and drives it home- this is crazy talk to me, I miss the delivery service offered in the city!  Anyway, Bob braved driving home with a perfectly shaped, 7 foot fir strapped to the roof of his car.  Piper was tickled pink that we had a tree on our roof.  I was tickled that we had picked out a beautiful real-live tree...2 years in a row!  We spent the night decorating the tree as a family.  I was going to do my traditional red, green, ivory ornaments with white lights.  However, I used all the white lights outside and Brynn managed to break about 5 of my red, green, and ivory ornaments.  I decided that it would behoove me to not use my breakable ornaments on this tree and to save them for my "special mom only fancy" tree. 

We used the plastic, homemade, and sentimental ornaments we've collected over the last decade (those would be placed very high obviously), candy canes, Christmas cards, mini stockings, and multi-colored lights.  The result was quite possibly the most beautiful rag tag Christmas tree full of memories and the best part: nothing was broken- taken off the tree a few times by little hands, yes, but nothing broken. 

I love my tree! 

Earlier in November, I bought tickets for the local dance company's production of the Nutcracker.  My intention was that it would be a fun Daddy-Daughter date night.  Piper got all dressed up and went with her daddy to see her first ballet.  She was super excited to spend time with her favorite guy and super excited to see some dancing.  Beforehand, I showed her the commercials for the Houston Ballet's Nutcracker and talked about the story line with her so she could understand a little bit of what was going on.  After the ballet, Bobby and Piper came home with McDonald's (P's favorite). They had a nice time and we plan on making it a tradition for years to come.

 

All dressed up for her big date with daddy!

 

Our community is fabulous and just about every weekend there was something going on.  We met up with a few friends and went to hear the Houston Symphony's Holly Jolly Christmas spectacular for FREE!  Despite it being about 80 degrees, I definitely got into the Christmas spirit.  This event doesn't happen every year, so I'm glad that we got to go.

 

After we attended the symphony, Bobby jetted off to New York City.  He saw some tourist-y things, but mostly he was held up with conferences and business meetings. 

 



Rockefeller Plaza

  While Bobby was gone, I was busy doing more Christmas-y things. Ms. Latsamy invited everyone over for a Christmas party and to make gingerbread houses.   We used graham crackers and regular frosting plus lots of sugary candies.  I couldn't resist eating the candies while Piper decorated. 

And later in the week, I helped with Piper's preschool class Christmas party/program.  Piper's class sang "Roo Roo the Red-Nosed Kanga" a play on the traditional "Rudolph" and then we ate pizza, played some games, and decorated sugar cones to look like Christmas trees.  The kids had  blast!

My little Roo Roo

 

Green frosting galore

 The piece de resistance this December would have to be the Christmas party at the church.  I was asked to be in charge of it and it took over my entire December.  Not only did I do this, but I also did a baby a shower for Ms. Molly earlier in the month.  I stretched myself a little too thin this year in regards to parties, but both were amazing successes so I can't complain!  (next year...not doing any parties except maybe one, but that's it, seriously that's all I'm doing.)

Magnolia 1st Ward Winter Wonderland

Miss Molly's Baby Shower

A week before Christmas, I was actually able to relax a bit before my family joined us for Christmas.  NO rest for the weary.