Christmas Day and the day after

Hopefully I will be able to finish up the last of our Christmas summaries with this post!

Christmas morning started with us rolling out of bed at 8:30 to be at my grandmother's house by 9.  This would explain why I look so beautiful  in all of the pictures!  This was the first year we had ever celebrated on Christmas morning, and it was a lot of fun!  I did feel rushed to get to our next destination which I hated.  Next year we plan to be at home on Christmas morning so we will be able to spend more time with everyone.  We draw names at Granny's which makes it nice.  I drew my mom and Don drew Rachel so they were easy to shop for! Granny and Grandonna gave us our gifts back in October (hello, Canon Rebel!) and let's just say it has barely left my side since!  I love it.

After breakfast and gifts, we packed up everything and headed to Greenfield to celebrate with Don's side!  They have a large group too, and play dirty Santa.  This was only my second year to experience a Blackman Christmas...they are too funny!

Lastly, we made a stop at Maw Maw's (Don's mom) so Ellie could open up her presents there.  Boy did she rack up!  We need a bigger house after this Christmas!

We finally made it home around 8:30 that night after an extremely long, but wonderful two days.  We put Ellie to bed and Don and I finally had some time to relax and exchange our gifts with each other.  We were exhausted and decided to play hookie from church the next morning.  Miss E needed a day at home!  Sunday night Mammie, Blythe, Eric and Jana came over for one last round of festivities.  We ordered pizza and had potato soup and Ellie got more great goodies!  We will be reading 5 books a day for a month to get through all of her new books she received this year.  This girl loves books!

All I can say is wow!  Our baby is so blessed and loved.  It was a wonderful Christmas, definitely one we will never forget.

Shew, I am tired just re-living all of that craziness!

Christmas Eve

After Santa visited our house Friday morning, we ran around like crazy trying to get everything packed up and ready to go to Memphis.  We got there around 3 and helped Peeps and De De finish up a few last minute things before Kelly, Grant and Reagan arrived.  We exchanged gifts with them and they got Ellie a Little People princess carriage with blocks.  Out of all of the toys she received this Christmas, she goes for this one every single time!  It really is cute, and I love Little People.  Her nativity is one of my favorites:)

We headed to church for the Christmas Eve service and Ellie did fantastic!  We had to sneak out once for a diaper change and another time just to stretch her legs, but overall she did so well.  I was very proud!

After church, the crowd arrived!  We had about 25 people total, and 4 kids aged almost 1, almost 2, 3, and 4!  It was a wild, LOUD night, but we had tons of fun!  I always enjoy our Christmas Eve family get togethers.  

Mom's pretty table

Best attempt at a pic of all 4 kiddos

 Santa came!  Ellie LOVES Santa:)

After everyone left, we exchanged gifts with my parents and Matt and Rachel.  Ellie stayed up until 11:00!  BIG mistake.  She was up half the night starting around 1:00 am.  Believe me, we will never let that happen again!

Santa Came!

I am going to have to break up our Christmas celebrations into separate posts since we celebrated numerous times and in different places.

Christmas Eve morning, Santa came to our house!  I swore up and down Santa was not going to go overboard...and I think overall he did pretty good.  He did sneak in a couple of last minute goodies, he just couldn't help himself!

Santa's elves learned a rookie lesson this year.  DON'T WAIT until the night of to assemble...there may be mishaps along the way!  Let's just say Daddy was up until the wee hours working on the Cozy Coupe that still isn't finished.  He did however get it assembled enough for Ellie to take a ride, though:)  Santa delivered the Cozy Coupe, a pillow pet (panda, of course!), Laugh and Learn Purse and Tea Set, books, puzzles, a ball popper, PB Kids jewelry box, an outfit, boots, Goodnight Moon sign language DVD and a few stocking treats!  I'd say Miss Ellie was a good girl this year!

Crawling in to see what Santa brought

What is all this stuff?

Going for a ride

Even though she had absolutely no idea what was going on, it was still a very special Christmas morning for us, and one I will always remember.  Dang Cozy Coupe, and all!

11 Months!

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!  Needless to say we did...one little lady was absolutely spoiled ROTTEN and I mean ROTTEN!!  We are extremely blessed, grateful, overwhelmed, and a tad bit embarrassed at the outpouring of love and thoughtfulness that was shown upon our family this holiday.

When I get the time and energy to do a full Christmas re-cap, I will.  But for now an 11 month post will just have to do!

Ellie, I cannot believe you are 11 months old!  Throughout the craziness of Christmas I just kept thinking back to this time last year, before you were even born.  Every time I would look at your cousin Turner I would think how that would be you in a year...and now we are here and you are just as sweet, active, "talkative" and funny as I had imagined!  We tried to make your first Christmas extra special (even though you were clueless!) and I think it turned out pretty great.  You have no clue how loved and adored you are by so many people.  It's pretty awesome for us to see that love shown to you in so many ways.  Sure the presents are great, and you WILL never be bored again a day in your life, but just knowing how many people want to hold you, and love on you, and babysit you and come visit you, and stare at your pictures is just so SO incredible!  I hope one day you will realize what joy you have brought to so many people.  Your timing was impeccable!  Even your Daddy is pretty blown away!  You have stolen our hearts and we love you SO SO much!


I guess now that Christmas is over, I need to gear over to full on party planning mode.  The invitations and decorations have been ordered, and we have now decided to request no gifts for your party.  We want this to be a celebration of your birth, but also a way for us to say thank you to the people that have done so much for you this past year.  They don't have to bring you another thing to show their love.  Their "presence" will be enough!  Here are a couple of funny outtakes from our birthday photo shoot!

You have become a little pickier about your food this month.  You won't eat another diced carrot or piece of ravioli.  Diced apples make you gag, but you and that yogurt are still BFF's!  I am going to really have to get creative about what to feed you now.  You love anything banana, mac-n-cheese, and still all the same baby foods.  Cheese puffs came in your stocking and you would eat the whole can if we let you!  Daddy says you are going to turn into a cheese puff!  I am starting to see a cheese trend, we really need to branch out a little more!  You are slowly wearing almost all 12 month clothes, moving up to a size 4 shoe and still a 3 diaper.  You are tall!!

You may be spoiled, but that just means that you are loved.  You are such a good, sweet, content baby.  I cannot believe you are about to be 1!

Christmas Card

You all have probably figured out by now that my new header is our Christmas card picture for this year.  I am so happy with how it turned out!  I bet you'd never guess that I had been sick all day and Ellie would come down with it later that night...but I pushed through and put on a happy face because we just HAD to get these pictures done.  I am SO glad we did!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Breakfast with Santa

Don is in the living room wrapping presents so I am banned to the kitchen.  I had a choice between laundry or blogging, and you see which one I chose!  Today we had a great time at our house with some of our closest buddies.  Santa came to wish a few of Ellie's friends a "Merry 1st Christmas!" this morning with a Breakfast with Santa party!

We had a "Hot Chocolate Bar" with all the toppings; juice, coffee and cokes.  For breakfast we had sausage squares, fruit, strawberry bread with cranberry butter, ham and rolls, hashbrown casserole, frosted grapes and cookies.  The babies even had their own sweet potatoes, cheerios and a spoon!

After all the guests arrived, they sat on Santa's lap for the traditional photo.  Here are a few of Ellie's sweet friends.  Can anyone take a guess at who "Santa" is?

We played in Ellie's almost finished playroom, read "The Night Before Christmas" and had a great time visiting.

As the favor, we gave the babies a picture frame for their Santa photo and a treat bucket with a letter to Santa, an ornament, and a wind up Santa toy!

ALL of the babies with Santa

This little baby was worn out!  She was the hostess with mostess!!!