Christmas in Our Home Town

Yeah, yeah, I know it's New Years' Day. I know I'm a procrastinator. At least my Christmas decorations are packed away! Be warned: this is going to be a long one.

I started decorating for Christmas early in December, and like I knew I would, I didn't finish until a few days before. I'm not much of a decorator, so I really did my very best at putting some effort into making it look festive in our home. Additional decorations this year are from Dollar Tree. Yup. I'm stylin' over here.

Below is the bar of our kitchen counter. The little tree is from Target that I bought last Christmas. The little penguin is one of Lily's toys and I included our lone Christmas card. Don't worry. We received more after Christmas, and I have a post written about that which I haven't published yet.

I bought some garland, bows, strings of bells and little accent decorations to make this garland and one over our large center window in the living room. The picture isn't that great, but I was pretty proud of the fact that I bothered trying to make something in the first place.

I always like to have some sort of centerpiece on my dining room table even though we never ever ever ever eat in there.

 Flowers for the left end table

This is from last year-on our right end table

I believe I finished decorating on the Tuesday or Wednesday night before Christmas. I don't remember which night, but it wasn't long that we left on the Thursday before Christmas. 

Christmas Eve Eve Eve

Before we made it to my parents house where we were staying Thursday night, we decided to stop at the mall and do some Christmas shopping. We finished some, but we could not finish it before Lily's my timer went off. Yup. I was the first one who started to get overwhelmed with the Christmas shopping. Sad. 

We knew we had to make a stop at Plucker's while we were in town, but we had no idea they opened one in the parking lot of the mall! What a lucky night! My two loves decided to start a very serious project while waiting for our food to arrive. 

Christmas Eve Eve

The next day, Friday, did not go as planned at all. Not one little bit. We planned that Robbie would go do some shopping at the mall and pick up some last minute gifts and my mom, Lily and I would stop and buy Lily some black shoes and go to the Bass Pro Shop and get Lily's picture taken with Santa. This would happen before Lily's nap time. We planned it this way because both would take a couple of hours, right? We could get everything done at the same time and then make it over to the M family's house a little after lunch time and spend several hours before going home.

What happened was that when we arrived at the Bass Pro Shop, we were told that we had to get a fast pass and come back FOUR HOURS LATER with our fast pass. And this was after buying her shoes, showing up, and changing Lily out of her street clothes into her Christmas clothes, leggings and all mind you, in the back seat of my mom's Jeep. Then we walked to the building and was told, NOPE! Come back later. So we walked back to the Jeep and had to undress her again. I called Robbie to tell him that change of plans. Sigh. But we adapted and made it work.

There were a couple of reasons why this annoyed us. First was that we saw several of our friends with small children close to Lily's age post their Santa pictures on facebook and they were crying every time. Well that wasn't going to happen to our kid. Our kid was cooler than those kids. So we planned the Santa visit in the morning before Lily's nap when she was fresh and happy. Instead, we were going to have to squeeze in a visit with family and then go take our cranky and unnapped kid to take a picture with Santa. We knew it was a lost cause before we even went back.

But we held out hope that maybe....

just maybe....

our way cooler than most kid....

would take a good Santa picture.....

What do you think?

EPIC SANTA FAIL!!!!

We've been told....

We'll laugh about this later. Much later.


Let's move on to Christmas Eve, shall we?


My parents planned a fantastic breakfast for Christmas Eve. This is one of the many reasons I love going home. Someone else cooks!

Lily helps Pyran flip pancakes

Makeshift high chair thanks to Pyran's ingenuity

Nomz

After breakfast present wrapping

After spending half the day at my parent's house, we went to visit Robbie's half. Robbie's dad remarried earlier this year, and his wife was in the decorating business. I think that may be why I decided to make an effort at decorating this year, though I am no where near as talented as she is. And I do not have quite the budget to do stuff like that. 

Choo choo train

LSU tree-it's Louisiana y'all-it's required!

The big tree

The Men

From left to right:

Jay (my brother-in-law), Mr. Wendell (my-father-in-law), Chris C., Chris M. and Robbie (my husband)

We spent the night at Robbie's halfs' place that night and ventured to my parents' place the next morning. 

Christmas.

I've been wanting to get her one of these since she was born. 

She likes her See N' Say

Twins. Pyran must have picked this hoodie out. Dunno what makes me think that.

Lily's favorite gift. And it still is her very favorite gift.

The following picture has a story. A few months ago, back when I was running, I needed to buy new shoes. It was a symphony weekend, which means I dropped Lily off at home with my mom. Before I had to leave, my mom, Lily and I went shoe shopping. They had a sale on shoes, buy one get one half off. Well, the salesperson showed me these cute little Nikes that would be only $5 because of the sale. After much deliberation, silly I know, I decided to buy them for Lily. I showed them to Robbie when we got home and he said, "I'm jealous! I've never had a pair of Nikes." Well, of course my mom called to ask how Robbie liked the shoes and I told that story. My dad heard the story and said, "We have to get that boy his first pair of Nikes for Christmas!" I knew for months and actually kept the secret from Robbie.

Well here he is....

Robbie's first pair of Nikes. Dude can't make a serious smile for nothing.

Ha ha! Serious smile...

Later that night we traveled back to Robbie's folks' and spent the night. The next morning I wanted to take more pictures in Lily's Christmas clothes.

Pretty girl

Big belly laugh

Pretty girl. Pretty tree. She won't let go of that game!

We'll pretend it's a book...

My little elf

All things considered, it was a fantastic Christmas and probably one of the best ones yet. It had it's ups and downs, and a few headaches, but the best part were the Christmas miracles this year. There were some Christmas angels in our lives this year, and I can't wait to share those stories with you. I hope everyone's Christmas was as merry as ours!!!

Merry Belated Christmas!!!