Doing it Victorian Style

Every year our church has a Victorian Style Christmas Celebration and we actually got to go this year! We had a blast, doing arts and crafts, eating sausage on a stick, drinking wassil, going carraige riding and sledding down the hill. I think the girls' favorite part was playing with their friends though. It was all at night so it was hard to get pictures, but I did manage a few...

I think Addison ate three sausage on a sticks that night!

Addison LOVED being entertained by George and Ashley!

Nini with her "Pink Monkey" (aka Emory)

Me and my sweet honey who volunteered to be the keeper of fire...he had no idea how much work that would be!

The girls loved helping the magician with his tricks!

Candlelight Christmas at Old City Park

We have an annual tradition of visiting Dallas Heritage Village's Candlelight Christmas along with Greg's family. We always have a great time visiting, looking at the old lights, enjoying the entertainment, eating kettlecorn and freezing to death. This year was no exception.

The kids visited Santa

They were very talkative with him, probably because he was wearing green instead of red...?

When Santa asked our nephew what he wanted for Christmas his reply was, "My turn!". He wanted to sit in Santa's lap, just like Addison did. Too cute!

I think Addison ate just about the entire bag of kettlecorn!

They have a really cool old Indian tent along with a true Native American telling stories and educating the visitors on the history of his culture.

The girls got ice cold Rootbeer!

Great times and wonderful memories!

Northpark at Christmas

Last Friday we kept Emory home from school and took Trinity out of school extremely early and all us girls met Greg at Northpark mall in Dallas to take in all the wonderful Christmas activities and spirit that take over the mall this time of year.

We started out by watching their two wonderful puppet shows,

Trinity and Addison waiting for Scrooge to begin

The girls practicing protecting themselves from the Christmas gift Scrooge so generously shares with all the children in the audience...a squirt bottle of water

Scrooge picked Trinity out of the crowd for his target of the show

we then enjoyed a snack in the food court (took so many pictures in the beautiful and natural light that I will have to make a post from those alone) before heading over to the trains

and closing the day by sliding down the planter boxes...

and finally to throw penies in the fountain.

Cookies and Crafts with Nana and Pops

Greg's Dad and Step-mom started a tradition a few years ago of a "Cookies and Crafts" day with all the kiddos. We were so excited when the day had arrived! We spent all day with them on Saturday doing lots of Christmas crafts!

We started the day with each grandkid opening a special gift from Nana and Pops

They each received a carefully and thoughtfully chosen collectible tree ornament

My precious nephew, Clark, hid under the kitchen table to escape the chaos

Clark was told he could no longer climb on the table...he wasn't too happy with his Mommy!

I think he'd had 7 or so cookies by this point...

Greg was extremely proud of his work of art!

Our brother-in-law is a total goof ball!

At the end of the day, after dinner and baths, Nana played Christmas carols while we all sang along, then read a story to the kids.

Emory was getting really lovey on her cousin, Aiden. In case you can't tell, he wasn't too pleased with the affection :)

Night, Night Nana! Thanks for the fun day and wonderful memories!