Even though it is almost Valentines Day, I wanted to take a moment to recap our wonderful Christmas vacation. Plus, since we will be parked in front of the TV watching the Olympics (per Jason’s request), I figure it’s a great time to do some catching up on the blog.
Lucy and I went to Atlanta a few days before Jason to spend time with my mom and sister who don’t work on Fridays. We went to the mall and took photos with Santa. It was pretty funny to see the difference between last year and this year. This year she was downright afraid of Santa. My mom had some candy with her, and that stalled her from jumping out of his lap for about a minute (long enough for them to grab a few pics). Cousin Wyatt meanwhile was blissfully unaware of Santa and did great! Santa doesn’t look too thrilled with trying to keep Lucy on his lap either, haha. I was actually really impressed with his ability to hold both of them.
After a little shopping and finishing things up for work, Jason got into town late on Friday. On Saturday the 21st we celebrated our 5th anniversary one day late. We went to Ray’s on the River and then saw the Hobbit at the theater. Dinner + Movie = my favorite date ever and for some reason it is so hard to fit both into one night. You either have to eat dinner pretty early (which is what we did), or see a movie super late. The dinner, movie, and company were all wonderful. I’m so grateful for the five super happy years I have had since getting hitched. Marrying Jason was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Love you boo!
That Sunday after church we went on a double date with my parents to see the play the Gift of Magi. After that we went to dinner at Rumi’s Kitchen – the first Persian restaurant I’ve been to, it was really good. Sadly, Jason had to drive back that night to be at work on Monday.
Lucy and I stayed in Atlanta. On Monday morning I did some Christmas crafts with the kids and Lucy. The crafts themselves were failures – I tried to do those ornaments that you swirl paint around in and for some reason all the paint sunk to the bottom of our ornaments 🙁 It was still fun doing an activity together though. For lunch, some of my college roommates, Julianna and Catie came over to see Lucy and then we headed to J. Christopher’s kid free. This has become our Christmas tradition and I love it! It was so fun to catch up. The poor restaurant staff didn’t know what to do with us since we stayed so long chatting. I left a good tip to make it up to them 🙂 As you can see the trend of lots of lots of food has started. It is a good thing I’m pregnant and can eat more than normal! After lunch, we returned home and hung out some more with the rest of my family. Kristen was also there with Wyatt and some of our her high school friends, so it was great reunion day! Jason got back around dinner time (poor guy did a lot of driving this year). And we were ready for Christmas Eve!
On Christmas Eve the baking began! I decided to make a white chocolate cheesecake red velvet from the cover of Southern Living. It was really fun to make and ended up being super tall! That cake had about million steps and took forever to make, but that’s part of the fun right? We also made some home made bread and Christmas cookies. Watching Lucy decorate Christmas cookies was one of the highlights of my Christmas. She was super focused and had so much fun.
For Christmas Eve, my little bro had the special honor of lighting the final advent candle at the 4:00pm service. This is a lot earlier than we typically go, but probably was the best for the little ones. We had to shift Lucy’s schedule a little and tried to feed her before we left but didn’t have time. This was actually a blessing in disguise because we took her whole snack with us (a chopped up apple and goldfish). We thought that there would be childcare at the service, but when we got there we found out that it required reservations! This would have been no biggie except that our family was sitting on the front row to see L light the candle! I was a little nervous about Lucy behaving well. Luckily we were armed with a diaper bag full of toys, a snack and a sippy cup. Although my attention was very averted during the whole service, she did pretty good and it was very special to have our biggest blessing with us in the service while we celebrated the birth of our Lord Jesus. We had some yummy appetizers and Brunswick Stew for dinner. Here’s what Lucy thought of the stew:
That night, we watched It’s a Wonderful Life in the basement while the guys played pool. It was fun getting to be there for Wyatt’s very first Christmas!
Kristen, Ben, and Wyatt spent the night at my parents house so we could all be together bright and early on Christmas morning. I was honestly more excited about Lucy getting gifts than getting gifts myself. Plus let’s be honest, a toy for her is really a toy for me and Jason too – since we play with them about as much as she does lol. It took a long time to open everyone’s gifts since there were just so many of us there – I think 11 in all? Lucy didn’t make it to Christmas brunch so we brought her high chair into the family room so she could watch people open gifts as she ate (she’s a really slow eater…). That morning she was rocking her Christmas PJs, which she still wears all the time!
For Christmas, Lucy got a teddy bear chair, a CozyCoupe Car, and a Grocery/Register set from Gigi and Pops, a farm set from Kristen and Ben, and puzzles, lift the flap books, and spin and say from us, as well as a book set with little sound pad and little people school bus from Great Grandma and Grandpa Baareman. We had the traditional scones and breakfast casserole for breakfast and spent the rest of the day playing with new toys and cooking Christmas Dinner. We had delicious beef tenderloin and homemade wheat bread – can’t remember the rest!
The day after Christmas, Jason had to go back to August for a work and Lucy and I stayed to hang out a little bit more. We did some day after Christmas shopping with Kristen and Wyatt and bought a lot of yummy stuff from Trader Joes. My mom was on the ball and undecorated the house but I conveniently couldn’t help since I got a short bout of morning/evening/prego sickness. That night, my dad and the kids went to see Frozen, which was really good! My mom stayed and watched Lucy. On my final half day I did some shopping with my mom and Summer and got a mani/pedi while Lucy stayed at home with Stormy. On the drive home to Atlanta, Lucy and I picked up Chris from the airport. I was hoping that since I hadn’t let Lucy take a nap like normal that for sure she would have passed out in the car the whole drive. Well that didn’t go as planned. She slept for 30 min from my parents house to the airport, but as soon as we picked up Chris, she never went back to sleep and instead was crabby and cried a lot of the drive home – poor Chris!
In the next post, I’ll write about our 2nd Christmas that we spent with the Baaremans in Augusta!
