Merry Christmas 2010

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. The best thing about our Christmases is that we are able to spend time with both of our families on Christmas day. Another great thing about this year is that my sister, Dana, was able to spend Christmas morning with us - a rare treat!

So we woke up early on Christmas day, and feasted our eyes upon Santa's great work. He brought Noel her now most prized posession...her "big bike"! She was completely showered with gifts this year...showered! In fact there were so many toys (of ours AND hers) that we could not fit it all in our car. Noel opened countless toys, ranging from babydolls to cookware and everything in between. We received a new toaster oven and a coffee maker. Tim received an air compressor and hunting/camping gear. Dana and I both received a beautiful Pandora charm bracelet.

After gifts were done, we got dressed and headed over to Tim's mom's house for their annual breakfast, complete with fried oysters and popcorn shrimp (don't worry, they have other breakfast food too! ;-) ) We ate breakfast, opened gifts, visited awhile, and headed back to Nannie and Poppy's house for some R&R, and later Christmas dinner.

Our Pictures:

Gingerbread House

This week we headed to Roanoke for a pre-Christmas get together. Dana and I both wanted to take a trip before Christmas so that we could take a load of gifts beforehand. Unfortunately my vehicle isn't quite big enough for all of us, plus our luggage and gifts!

Anyway, we ended up getting snowed in which was SO much fun. It was too bad we didn't have Noel's snow suit though!

We also made our Gingerbread house which Noel thought was awesome. She ate most of the candy before it made it onto the house, but that's half of the fun of course :)

Here are the pictures

Santa Hugs

Last week, Noel visited Santa at our local mall. We've been preparing her for weeks, showing her pictures of him, and telling her what to expect. We weren't sure if she'd have the same reaction as last year, which was...completely terrified.

When she saw Santa she was a little hesitant at first. But he bent down to talk to her, and she gave him the biggest bear hug! It was incredibly sweet :) I wish I had a video of their meeting!

She sat on his lap for an extended period of time, completely consumed with the candy cane he gave her. She forgot what she wanted to ask for, but thankfully we were able to see Santa again this week at playgroup!

Here is a picture of her picture with Santa.

Merry Photos

This year, instead of paying someone with ZERO photography skills to click a button and then dish out too much money for said service...I had my own little photo shoot.

It included:

A fresh Christmas tree
A yummy candy cane
A holiday dress
Holiday cheer

and last but not least...an adorable little girl.

It was hard to pick out a photo for our Christmas card, but we decided on this one:


These were the other contenders:



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Playing Reindeer Games

Today Noel and I made some Rudolph cookies for playgroup this week. We're doing our annual Christmas party, complete with gifts for the kids, a smorgasbord of treats, and a visit from Santa.

Originally these cookies were supposed to be made with peanut butter cookie dough, but due to peanut allergies in the group, we substituted sugar cookie dough.

We ended up making the sugar cookies from scratch, which is better anyway. Sugar cookie mix tends to create cookies that are extremely hard to shape. We started out with M&M's (for the nose), chocolate chips (for the eyes), icing (as glue), and mini chocolate-covered pretzels (for antlers).

Noel helped mix in the ingredients, and I formed the dough into triangles. I tried to get her to help in that, but she hated the way the dough felt on her hands and asked me if she could wash her hands.

Anyway, after baking, it was time to decorate. I thought they turned out great!