What a Holiday Month!!

🎄Happy December!!🎄

Christmas 2019 came upon us so so fast!! We squeezed in as much as we could during the month of December.  This included baking, cookie decorating, gifting, volunteering at Ama’s school, singing to Christmas carols (which started before we even celebrated Thanksgiving 😆), having chilly mornings with Hot Chocolate, enjoying chilly night golf cart rides admiring our neighborhood Xmas lights, eating, eating, and more eating!.... and lots and lots of snuggles with favorite Christmas movies and books! Here are a "few" pictures to recap our December.....

Decorating our tree is always fun. The kids decorate the whole thing! Pat and I have our roles, but the kids get to choose where the ornaments go and hang most themselves. I get to sit with my glass of wine and unwrap each ornament, reminiscing over the stories that go with each special one.  There is only one ornament that I can’t remember how it came about....but as for the rest, the kids love to hear who gave it to us, what we were doing at the time, where we were living, and so on and so on. (Our tree decorating is sometimes a 2 night event lol!) And Pat helps the kids to put the ornaments on the tree, picking them up if they think it should go on a high branch, pinching the hooks to help secure them, catching the heavy ones that Merek never should of had in the first place 🤪, and carefully placing the one ornament that we just can’t risk the kids dropping....

 We joined our friends at the Christmas parade where the kids love seeing all of the floats, dancers, music, and candy! They get lots and lots of candy!! See if you can figure out where Ama stashed hers😂....

Then we all bombard a local friend’s restaurant for our dinner. This has become an annual tradition and we love supporting Dino’s Restaurant!  They always host our crazy crowd with so much love as we TAKE OVER an entire room in their restaurant!

The amazing first grade teachers host a day of crafts and decorating gingerbread houses! I love getting to volunteer to help all the kids! It gives me a great opportunity to be a part of Ama’s school and I feel so connected to all of her friends and teachers. Plus- they are always so sweet and allow Merek to participate in whatever activity they are doing! He has become quite the celebrity at her school, and feels like such a big kid . 

Such good students

And then, the best part, is getting to eat the Gingerbread house!

Our Elf, Bell, was her usual hilarious self this year! Ama and Merek captured a few pics of her cute hiding places...

We decorated lots and lots and lots of sugar cookies! Delivering them by the plateful to all of Pat’s employees (four shifts worth of cookies!), our Recycling and Waste workers, our Postal lady, our neighbors and anyone else we could think of! We like bringing boxes of cookies when we go out and about, giving them to our servers at restaurants or cashiers at markets. 

This was one of the plates we took to Ama’s school. The kids walked around offering cookies to all of Ama’s teachers; art, music, PE, office staff, and any teacher that we saw in the hallways!  Ama and Merek love doing it, and I don’t see how you could possibly have a bad day after a cutie pie offers you a cookie and a Merry Christmas! Hope we helped to lift any spirits that needed lifting 🎄. 

Walked into the living room and caught these two snuggling to the Hallmark channel (yes, it’s a guilty pleasure of mine during the holidays). If you’ve ever sat ‘near’ Merek, you know that he has to be touching you, if not sitting on top of you!  He's just a snuggle bug. 

❤️🎄We are thankful for the few mornings it was cold enough for hot chocolate 🎄 ❤️

I woke up one morning with “panic” that Christmas was almost here!  What could I possibly do to add in another Christmas memory????....and then the light bulb went off, or should I say, the TV spoke to me. There it was, a commercial screaming Christmas spirit- an Elf on the Shelf event at IHOP! 

🎄🎅🤶🎄

So I messaged Ama’s teacher and told her we would be coming in late that day- we had some very pressing Christmas memories to make! 

My kids have never been to IHOP- so they made quite the spectacle of themselves singing about how awesome IHOP is as we waited😂. For kids that are quite spoiled, they are also not hard to impress and are appreciative of all the little things. They crack me up!

While this photo is Ama “drama” at her best 😉, she genuinely was excited and appreciative of everything!  Repeatedly telling every waitress, cook, and staff member walking by “Thank you!” ....“Thank you!”... “Thank you”! She just thought everyone there was as excited to serve her Elf Struddle as she was receiving it. Although I am pretty sure that her smile, joy and excitement did inspire them, even if it was just a little extra Holiday spirit.  That’s my girl 💗

GREEN Elf on the Shelf pancakes 😳....so VERY much against everything in my soul 😫, but the excitement on Ama and Merek’s face was worth it!

Our Christmas light golf cart rides are so fun. I think it was around 4 years ago that I first said “Thank you people” out loud as I was appreciating the effort it takes to put up Xmas lights. And it immediately stuck for our kids and has been a theme of our golf cart rides. And the kids have grown it into even more appreciative phrases...

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

I don’t have much from Christmas morning as I really do try to live in the moment on that morning 🥰, but here’s what I did capture!

My big kid these days! Pouring the milk herself for Santa ☺️ Christmas Eve

 BTW, the fact that Merek is shirtless, was his own demand going to bed Christmas Eve. This kid never really sleeps shirtless, pant-less yes, but shirtless....no.  Maybe he was skeptical of this Santa guy breaking into his house that night and wanted to be ready to protect his girl, but either way...we thought he looked handsome! Go ‘head kid!

While we always hope for that really cold Christmas Day in Florida, it has also always been nice to use all of our new toys on the day we get them...

What a gorgeous Christmas day!

Merek received a bike from Santa for Christmas and I just thought he looked handsome riding it...oh how I love this kiddo!

On Christmas night we drove “The Drive” to enjoy the Christmas lights and sing Christmas Carols. I selected Mariah Carey’s full Xmas album, so the harmonizing that was coming out of our truck was, um, ‘noticeable’....to say the least! 😆.  The Drive led us to downtown Stuart where we let the kids ride their new Razors around the decorated downtown. Just another way for me to extend the holiday and Christmas light gawking! 

We had a wonderful Holiday season! 

Merry Christmas to all! And to all ...well...to all, a GREAT night!!