Christmas 2010

We started our Christmas celebration with Arch's family on Christmas Eve morning with a breakfast of waffles and sausage. Ruth Ann is a big fan of a carbohydrate, so she helped herself to not 1, but 2 waffles...resulting a fabulous mid-morning nap, Merry Christmas to me! After breakfast we exchanged gifts and then headed home to rest up before heading to church at 4:30pm for a new service geared for children. There was a live nativity outside which was a hit with Ruth Ann...she loved all of it...except for the wise men. I'm not sure why her stranger danger alarm was triggered by the 3 wise men, but days later she is still telling me that she doesn't like the wise men and she wants to know where they are. If she asks, I've told her they dropped off their gifts for Baby Jesus and have gone back home to the East where they came from. This seems to make her happy, but if she asks you once, she'll ask you a hundred more times. The service was 100% kid oriented, which is a nice change for both parents and the children. No one was forced to be quiet & you could keep your child in the service with you without fear of on ugly look in your direction if your child spoke out during a quiet moment in the service...we'll be attending this service for many more years to come! Then we headed to my parents house for chili and cornbread. Even though I knew my pregnancy induced reflux would be raging after this meal, I still enjoyed every last delicious bite...it was worth the reflux.

Ada and Ruth Ann played for a little while, and decorated cookies with Grammy...and also helped themselves to frosting...













Then we headed home to get ready for Santa. We brought home some of the cookies to leave out for Santa and what may have been one of the largest carrots I've ever seen for Rudolph.



Here are Ruth Ann's gifts from Santa before...



And after...



I'm told Santa had given thought to leaving Ruth Ann a new baby doll to go along with her new baby accessories, but when he looked around and saw all the babies we already had, he decided to let the our current baby dolls use the new toys and maybe next year he will leave a new baby doll for Ruth Ann.



Days later I'm still cleaning up toys...but that's what Christmas is like for parents, right?? Ruth Ann walked in the living room yesterday and said "Where are my presents?" in her very dramatic way...Arch told her to just look around...they are everywhere! Sadly, I was forced to grow up a little this Christmas. Santa stopped leaving big ticket items under the tree for me years ago, but a stocking was always filled with goodies for me on Christmas morning....this year there was no stocking. Although I had received word from the elf responsible for my stocking weeks ago there would be no stockings this year, I still felt a little sting from loosing what has been my favorite Christmas tradition & the only tradition that still made me feel a little bit of the child-like excitement of Christmas morning. If you know me in person you know I hate change...I'm still often heard saying at my 32 years of age "When I grow up...". I know it's my turn to be the grown up at Christmas...but this role is still very new to me and it doesn't mean I have to like these new changes just yet.



These bedroom shoes have been a big hit with Ruth Ann. The only time she has taken them off has been to go to bed and even then there are tears involved. Only with the promise that she can put them on when she gets up in the morning will she let you take them off of her feet. And this girl has a long memory because it's the first thing she grabs when she wakes up in the morning.



What makes me laugh about this next picture is the chocolate ring around Ruth Ann's mouth. My Grandpa (my mom's dad) had the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I've ever known. My grandparents always had sweets in their house and you never got up from their supper table until you had dessert. Every year for Christmas we would give my Grandpa a Whitman's chocolate sampler. I'm carring on the tradition...my dad loves chocolate covered cherries and I bought my mom a box of milk chocolates...guess who helped each open their box of candy???



So Christmas came and went...but we had one more surprise left for the day after Christmas...SNOW!! Arch and I were watching Fox News saturday morning and learned from the weather girl that to qualify as a "White Christmas" there must be at least 1 inch of accumulation...what?? Who sat around establishing rules for a White Christmas? We had well over an inch at our house, but I'm sure since it all fell on December 26th it wouldn't qualify as a White Christmas either...but guess what, we live in the South and snow on the weekend of Christmas constitutes a White Christmas in my book...I'll be establishing my own set of official rules at a later date!

















Arch kept throwing snowballs at Ruth Ann...eventually she started throwing some back...



Whenever my mom has plans of stopping by our house I always say to Ruth Ann "Guess who's coming to our house?" and she's caught on to this game and replies "Grammy"...but not this weekend. On Sunday my mom was coming by so I asked Ruth Ann the usual question but this time her reply was "Santa"...nope, sorry, Santa's on vacation now and won't be back for a whole year. A year that I expect will fly by at our house, but a year none the less!