Christmas 2016: Part Two

Christmas Part 2 involved driving to Nani and Papa's house for the weekend!  We left on Friday morning after Anthony's chiropractor appointment and hit the road.  We were all a little exhausted from all of the fun the night before for my birthday, but were excited to get on the road!  I was cooking a meal for everyone that night so I was anxious to get to Hickory and get my grocery shopping done.

We arrived right on schedule and Nani and Paige were there to greet us!  Papa still had to work, so Anthony went with me for a "grocery shopping" date.  It was nice - even if we were in the grocery store!  We spent the rest of the day cooking and breaking in Nani and Papa's new oven.  They got a fancy new oven and I was the first one to cook in it!  I felt so privileged :)  The meal turned out great, even if we did burn the first batch of crostini to a crisp.  The broiler works really well in that thing, apparently.

 

We woke up Christmas Eve morning and made the best food ever - Monkey Bread.  Nolan enjoyed mixing up the biscuits in the cinnamon-sugar mixture.  He liked eating it once it was baked even better!

 

We have been talking more and more about the true meaning of Christmas this year, and we kept telling Nolan that we were going to be celebrating Baby Jesus's birthday, and that's what Christmas was about.  After telling him this story a few times, he proceeded to tell me one morning on the way to school that we need to make Baby Jesus a birthday cake.  Since he is a baby and has two teeth, he can eat birthday cake and we needed a cake for him.  It melted my heart, and made sense to me, so we decided to make a birthday cake for Baby Jesus on Christmas Eve.

 

We had a Gingerbread man tin that I bought just for Christmas, and decided that it was the perfect pan for the birthday cake :)  Nolan helped me make the mix, and even decided to leave his handprint for Baby Jesus in the cake mix.

 

 

After his nap, the cake was cool enough to decorate!  I had to get a picture earlier on of the name "Jesus" on it, because I knew that it would quickly be covered with an inch of sprinkles and sugar.  I was right!  Thank goodness it was warm enough outside to let him do it on the back porch - we would have had a sugary mess if not!

 

The finished product!

 

We decided to try to make it to Christmas Eve service again this year, and I am so glad we did.  Nolan did really well throughout the entire service.  I think he really enjoyed the singing, and there were hundreds of new people he didn't know, so he had plenty to watch.  It was standing room only, so he split his time between us on our row, and Nani and Papa a couple of rows down. I about died when he walked around to come sit with us in the middle of service and said, loud as could be, "I had chocolate, Mommy!"  It cracked us (and everyone around us up).  Of course he had chocolate whilst sitting on Nani's lap - big surprise :)

 

 





 

Even though I can barely get a "normal" smile out of him these days, these pictures still melt my heart!  He is for sure my biggest and best present ever!

Christmas 2016: Part One

I am sure I say it every year, but Christmas with kids is SO much fun, even if it is exhausting!  We lived up the Christmas spirit this year - from cookie parties with friends to light shows and parades.  It was so much fun and Nolan was happy and healthy which made things that much better.

We missed our first "round" of Christmas with Mom's side of the family due to weather and a little cold, but Nolan had a great time opening his gifts they brought home and sending a video to everyone.  I really missed being able to see Granny read the Christmas story, but I am already looking forward to hearing her read it next year - just a week shy of 90 she'll be!

We celebrated an early Christmas/birthday at my mom's house on my actual birthday.  We had Tommy and Jeremy in town too, which was nice since we don't see them often.  And Nolan loved having two big uncles around to play with!

Mom cooked my favorite meal and we had red velvet pound cake for dessert.  Nolan seemed pretty confused that it was my cake and not his :)

After going to the funeral earlier that day, it was such a fun night to just have time with family and relax.  Nolan got some super fun gifts, the star of which was his HUGE racetrack from Ollie and Gie.  I don't think he realized just how big it was until we set it up at home!

 

Christmas Round 1 was a complete success!  Sometimes, it's nice to have your birthday and Christmas so close together - sometimes :)

We Finally Made it to the Light Show!

We live just a mile down the street from this farm that does a huge haunted house in October and a huge Christmas light show in December.  We made it to the haunted house the first year we moved in, but we have never been able to make it to the light show.

It seemed like we weren't going to be able to make it again this year, until last night!  We decided on a last-minute whim to try and get in before it got too busy.  We planned to grab Nolan from school and then rush back to the farm once we went home and changed clothes, in order to be there right when they opened.

 

They have a huge fire pit, Santa was there in his sleigh, plus they have a sweets shop and the main event; a 30-minute hayride through the woods to see thousands of Christmas lights!  It was cold, but we bundled Nolan up really well and made it in perfect time - we were able to get on the first trailer out and didn't have to wait in line at all.

Turns out, it was really worth the ticket!  The trailer carried about 40 people, and it played Christmas music the whole time.  The trail didn't really look all that impressive until we saw that the lights were on motion sensors and so they came on right as the trailer pulled up to them.  They were even timed with the music which I thought was really impressive.  Nolan loved it and they had some pretty cool set ups.  There was a huge gingerbread house, a train, and then tons of other sections.

It's literally impossible to take pictures in the dark while moving :)

The ride was the perfect length of time; we were all really cold and ready for dinner by the time it was done, but I am so glad we made it this year!  We will for sure keep it as a tradition going forward.

On Being 35...

Well, it's official: I am 35 today.  Mid-thirties.  Five years to 40.  I'm pretty sure I am even in the next check box of ages that you complete on surveys.  Oh boy.

You know, it honestly came upon me pretty quickly, and with a three-year-old I haven't had much time to really ponder it.  Some nights I get a quick flutter of panic that I am indeed getting older, but they are usually fleeting because I am so tired that I fall asleep in 5 seconds flat.  Having a preschooler will do that to you, and I am truly thankful for that.

I went to a funeral today.  Certainly not how I would spend my birthday, but that is a nominal thought considering our friends lost a wife and a mother this past weekend.  We also lost a member of Jacob and Lexie's family this past weekend too.  A 16 year old.  And here I am gulping at turning 35.

It's a mixed bag of emotions for me today.  I am thrilled because it's Christmas and I LOVE Christmas and it's even more joyful having Nolan to celebrate it with.  But I am sad, too.  I grieve as these families try to figure out how to move on while having a huge aching hole in their hearts.  I cannot even fathom doing this thing called "life" without my Mom, and forget not having Nolan.  You can just forget that.

But I still smiled and laughed today.  Because the passing of these two sweet people only reinforced that life is too valuable to spend any other way than happy and full of thanks.  God gave me more gifts than I can imagine, and especially a gift in the message of the funeral I went to.  The Pastor spoke about how Ms. Kathy's family found solace in her house.  How she cooked and "mom"ed for everyone around her and for those she loved most, they got the very best.  And while it was a sad service, I left feeling full of purpose and honored that I heard that message today.

I am 35.  I am SO blessed to be 35 and have my family, my husband, and my son.  I have had 35 years of love, laughter, trials, lessons and experience.  And I know my purpose in life even more than I did before.  I want to be that solace, that comfort and that rock.  I want everyone that knows me to feel my love for them.  To know that I do my best for them.  To have the memories of me that I was there and they knew they could count on me.  My purpose is to smile, be positive and show God's grace all the days that I am blessed to be on this earth.  Each day is truly a gift, and I plan to savor each one.

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Annual Cookies and Cocoa Party!

After the kids enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies so much last year, I figured it would be fun to start a tradition and host an annual "Cookies and Cocoa" party this year :)  Hopefully, we can keep it going year after year!

We ended up having to reschedule from the first time, which turned out much better because more of our friends were able to make it the second time.  My amazing sister-in-law made some adorable favor tags for our favors, and I did up the rest of the kitchen.

The favors were special spatulas, and I think they turned out really cute!

 

I tried to contain most of the action to the kitchen, so as to keep the "sprinkle fairies" from sending sprinkles all over the house :)  It worked well and the kitchen was festive and perfect for a party.

Elfie had to make sure he had the perfect spot for supervising...

We had sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, tons of icing and to-go boxes.



Nolan clearly loved it!

 

The new icings in the squeeze bottle made things so much easier.  And I didn't have to make it!

 

 

Just to stick to the theme, we had a hot cocoa station.  We had candy canes, marshmallows and little tiny cookies for topping.  I made sure to pack "to-go" bags for everyone so we weren't tempted with it all in the house!

 

Overall, the kids had a great time, the adults had a great time, and it was a success!  Next year will be even more fun when all the kids are older I am sure.

 

Clayton Christmas Tree Lighting

I really wanted to take Nolan to Clayton's Christmas Tree lighting this year, since he was a little older I felt like he would get a lot more out of it this year.  Anthony was coming home late from work, so I ran Nolan up to the town square to try and get in a little fun before it got too late.

We were able to find a pretty good parking space and walked up Main Street to find our neighbors.  On the way we passed lots of carolers, music, and the live Nativity scene that even had lambs and cows.

Nolan was very interested to see the Nativity scene, since we have a few of them up around the house but he doesn't quite know what they mean yet (except for you can't touch them and that's Baby Jesus :)

Bad lighting, but it was really well done!

There were two baby goats in the back that were the cutest!

We made our way to meet our neighbors where we were able to take a quick train ride with Jasmeen and Kaleb.

On the train.

 

The train ride just so happened to be next to Santa Claus, but I didn't have much hope we would get a picture this year.  Nolan didn't really want anything to do with Santa last year for pictures, and the line was so long to sit on Santa's lap.  I took him over there anyway, just so we could say we saw Santa, and it turns out it was a great idea!  We saw our friends in line, and so we just "snuck" Nolan into line with them and no one complained :)

 

We only had to wait about 10 minutes before it was his and Calvin's turn to sit on Santa's lap.  Much to my surprise, Nolan jumped right up on his lap and gave me the best smile!

 

So cute - red eyes and all! :)

 

I was able to get a couple of photos and then Calvin joined him and they both sat there and listened to what Calvin was asking from Santa for Christmas.  I almost had to drag Nolan to get him off of Santa's lap this year - amazing how one year changes things!

 

Once they were done, a couple of photographers stopped us and took a couple of pictures of Nolan and asked his name.  I didn't think anything of it, and then the next day Jasmeen sent me this picture of Nolan from Clayton's Facebook page.  Too funny - he was chewing his candy cane that he got from the elf and was paying NO attention to the photographer :)

 

 

Then, a couple of nights later, I got a text from Jen and she said that the boys made the front page of the Clayton News Star!  Sure enough, the newspaper that I run over in my driveway 15 times before I finally throw it away had a picture of the boys right on the first page.  They even spelled their names correctly, which is a miracle!  Glad I didn't throw this paper away this week!





Thanksgiving 2016!

I had a total "mom fail" and barely took any pictures of our Thanksgiving, but I guess that means I was enjoying the moment :)

Little man kept up with tradition and ended up with an ear infection right before we left town, so we were a little bit haggard by the time we rolled into Nani and Papa's house Thursday night.

We were able to enjoy a great lunch with Mom's side of the family, and Nolan seemed to be in good spirits despite only being on an antibiotic for one day.  The weather was so beautiful so we were able to spend a good amount of time outside.

We made it to Hickory around 4:00, which gave us some good time to chill before the rest of the clan arrived :)  Our tradition has become to have Andre and Sammi and family up too, which is great and Nolan always talks about seeing his cousins for this trip!  I was able to rally and even though I had just started eating after my food poisoning from the weekend before, I made it and was almost back to normal by the time we headed out to shop that night.

The girls (me, Paige, Sammi and Bella) trooped out to go shopping after Nolan went to sleep, and scored some great stuff even though it was crowded!  The lines moved pretty fast and we were home by 11:00 or so (thank goodness I had Nani to watch the babe and get up with him when he woke up at 5:00 a.m.!)  This was his first night [almost] sleeping through the night, so that was a good start!

We spent the rest of the weekend alternating between parks, shopping, and cooking.  I got to cook everyone a big Mediterranean meal on Saturday night, and it was such a joy.  I love cooking and entertaining and it was great to be able to focus on the food and have Nolan completely entertained and having fun.  It turned out really good, so I think I get the honor to cook more at Christmas!

Where he goes, Daddy follows :)  Even with a hurt back!

 

 

We ended up being able to catch up on sleep and had a great time.  This is a great tradition we have started and I am so thankful to Nani and Papa for hosting us every year!  Even more so, I am SO thankful for all of our blessings; we may have stresses, or worry about money, or feel sick or just have bad days, but the blessings we share are far more than we deserve and there will always be family and God - what more do we need?!

A Quick Mini-Vacation

Anthony and I snuck away this past weekend for a quick little "Pre-Holiday Madness" trip.  Or, a "Late Anniversary Trip."  There are a million titles I could use for it!  Basically, it started out wonderful and ended pretty darn terrible!

Let me back up a bit.  We were able to get a hotel for free in Myrtle Beach, since my mom had some extra points left over from one of her timeshares.  This already was a terrific perk!  We didn't care that it was Myrtle Beach even - just a free place to go with just the two of us was enough!  We ended up having to change to an inland hotel a few weeks after Hurricane Matthew, but again, we didn't care at all!  The hotel we ended up having was actually in a pretty good location (near a mall, shops, close to each highway, etc.)

I only took pictures with my cell phone this whole trip!

We left on a Friday right after dropping Nolan off at school and hit the road.  We took 5 million back roads to get there, but the drive was very nice and it allowed Anthony to rest a little bit; he has been having some very serious back pain lately, so resting has been difficult for him.

We made it down well before we could check into our room, so the closest mall was on our agenda first :)  We spent a few hours walking around, shopping, eating lunch and Anthony got a good massage from one of the little guys in the mall.  We decided to check into our hotel and rest some before heading back out for dinner.  I had seen a Michael's and Homegoods nearby so I convinced him to go with me :)

We spent a little while shopping before we decided it was time for dinner!  We had no idea where to go, but based on some recommendations from a coworker of mine we settled on a little Italian place nearby.  It ended up being a perfect spot for dinner and we had a nice quiet dinner, just the two of us.

Saturday we had a yummy breakfast at Bob Evan's restaurant before heading up 17 to the outlet mall.  We didn't want to do too much shopping so Anthony didn't have to walk too much with his back, but I couldn't be that close to some good outlets and not check them out.  We found some good deals, but were really more excited to try and spend some time on the beach than shopping.  We headed back to the hotel to change clothes and make a gameplan for the afternoon.

We changed clothes and decided to head to the beach for lunch and a walk by the water.  It turned out that the weather was beautiful and very warm, so it was the perfect day to eat lunch outside and walk to beach!  We found a place right on the water near the ferris wheel for lunch.  Afterwards, we walked on the pier and walked up and down the beach for an hour or so.  The weather was plenty warm, but the water was FREEZING.  I don't know how there were actually kids and people in the water playing (must have been crazy), but my toes were frozen just from walking in it!

I love this picture of him!

 

After we had our fill of sandy toes, we headed back to the hotel to rest up and get ready to meet Angel and his wife for dinner that night.  We were surprised they just so happened to be in town the same weekend we were, so we needed to get in some fun while we could!

 

 

This is the best picture of I have of me before my night pretty much got ruined.  Somehow, I guess I ate something horribly bad at dinner, because about 30 minutes after dinner we had to leave because my stomach was hurting so bad.  We got back to the hotel, and let's just say that after 1:00 a.m. things went BAD.  I was so horribly sick that I didn't sleep all night and Anthony had to pack up our hotel room the next morning and drive us all the way home.  I was so sick I couldn't even sit up straight so we had to remove the car seat and I laid down in the backseat the entire.way.home.  We got home and I was so happy to see Nolan but I had to get back in the bed and stayed there most of the rest of the day.

 

Needless to say, our vacation didn't end how we wanted it to, but I told Anthony that it made me love him even more.  He took such good care of me and Nolan while I was down for the count, that I was so thankful that I have him on my team.  Next time, if a restaurant is empty on a Saturday night, I will remember my lesson and GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! :/

A First: NCSU Basketball!

My firm hosted a drawing for their suite passes this past weekend to an NC State basketball game, and I thought Nolan would love it!  We have been to the suite before, and learned that this is the way to go with a busy three year old, so I was thrilled when we won the tickets.

 

 

The suite is right at half-court, so we couldn't have asked for a better view.  We got there soon after the game started, and Nolan was mesmerized!  He is taking basketball classes at his school, so he was excited to see what an actual game looked like.

 



 

Turns out we learned two things this day: (1) he will stay in his seat the entire game; and (2) he LOVES the cheerleaders and dancers.  No joke - he must have asked 100 times why the girls weren't "dancing" when they were on the sidelines and not performing.  It was hilarious!  I really think his favorite thing about the game were the girls!  Whatever worked, he stayed in his seat and did not budge the entire game.

 

 

He tried his best to learn the Wolfpack hand sign, and he almost mastered it!  My USC alumni would be ashamed :)

 





The Wolfpack ended up with a win, and we all had a great time.  It's pretty nice to have a whole suite all to yourself, and our parking spot was within 10 feet of the entrance.  We felt like pretty cool people - if only for the day :)

He is my King of the Game, for sure :)

Halloween 2016!

Halloween this year was so much fun, albeit a bit hectic since it actually fell on a Monday this year (I mean, can't we make all kid-centric holidays on weekends?!)

I was able to make it home in time to get Nolan changed and Ollie and G headed over to man the house while we Trick-or-Treated and to hand out candy.  Mom was sweet enough to make us a fantastic dinner, so we had plenty to eat when we got home.

 

Nolan and Kaleb in their costumes :)

 

We decided to let Nolan loose in the Walmart aisles this year to pick out his own costume.  I figured he would have an opinion on what he wanted to be this year, and it was a fun little outing after breakfast to let him run around and look at the costumes.  Thankfully, we found a Spiderman one that fit him, and he only wore it one whole day before actual Halloween :)

 

Mom was a true hero and made the BEST Batman costume to go along with Nolan.  I hate we didn't get any good pictures of the two of them together, but Nolan just thought she was the best thing ever!

 

Our neighbors joined us along with their cousins for some candy hunting.  We loaded everyone up in the back of Anthony's truck and hit up the long loop of houses across from our street (a/k/a the "big" houses).  Since the houses are pretty far apart, this worked well as we could park the truck every little bit, the kids would hit up a few houses, and we would drive down to the next ones.  We only had to make three stops, and the kids had their fill and we were ready to get them home and ready for dinner!

 

 

 Loaded up and ready to go!  We had Spiderman, a pirate, a skeleton and a cute witchy princess :)

 

We headed back home and spent the rest of the night eating with Ollie and G and handing out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters that made their way to our house.  I am pretty sure Nolan got just as much of a kick out of handing out candy as he did getting it!  We ran out of our last piece of candy just as we were preparing to turn the lights out and put Nolan to bed, so I call that a success all the way around!

 



Hill Ridge Farms 2016

I wasn't sure if we were ever going to make it to Hill Ridge this year, as each time we had plans to go either we had a hurricane blow through or something got rescheduled.  Well, we finally made it as a family of three this past weekend and it was even better than last year!

It was quite a bit colder and much more windy this year, but was a beautiful Fall day regardless.  We left the house not long after we had breakfast, and just hoped Nolan would power through his nap and then sleep on our way home.  They let you take picnics in with you, so I packed up some chicken salad sandwiches and some noodle salad to eat while we were there.

We took advantage of his small size and got him in for free (one advantage here, people!) and did everything but the extra train ride.  They also had bouncy houses set up ALL over the park, and that was really great because they weren't so crowded when he was in there.
 

My boys :)

 

We spent the first half of the morning walking around and checking stuff out.  They had a new inflatable this year, which was this 100 foot long pumpkin that they could run back and forth on.  It was AMAZING, and so hilarious to watch the kids run on (their legs would give out here and there over the bumps and it was so funny).  He spent a big chunk of his day running back and forth and back and forth.

 

Anthony and I just basically set up base on each end and let him run!

 

 

The boys wanted to go down the big slide, and I waited at the bottom for photos.  The slide is about 200 feet long, and a full tunnel.  I expected to see them pop out together, but what do you know that Nolan wanted to go ALL by himself and he popped out the bottom just as thrilled as he could be!

 

I think Daddy's ride was a bit more rough than Nolan's :)

 

Soon it was time for lunch and we hunkered down in a picnic area and tried to get him to shove some food in his mouth :)  Basically, that consisted of us chasing him around and shoving food into his mouth as he ran by - ha.

 

 

We saved the pumpkin hayride for the very end, so we could leave with our pumpkins in hand.  We weren't sure how the pumpkin field was going to look this year after so much rain from the hurricane, but they had plenty and we had time to find just what we wanted. I usually use this trip to find our "carving" pumpkins for Halloween.

 

Nolan does not smile for pictures anymore...this is our new "smile" face!

Those big brown eyes make me melt!

 

We left when we were all exhausted and headed home.  I was so glad we were able to keep our tradition this year and make it back - there is nothing that makes me happier than to get traditions like this going for Nolan, and us.  To me, it's small things like this that make you look back on your childhood with (I hope for Nolan) and fondness of those memories and the knowledge that his parents tried to make the most out of each day and Holiday!