Hunter's First Christmas

Santa made a stop at our house this year! We woke up around 8 am Christmas morning to see that Santa had brought Allie & Hunter lots of goodies! Allie got a big doll house she had been asking for and Hunter got a crawl through farm. They were very spoiled by not only Santa but Gigi & Poppy! Allie opened all of her (and Hunter's) gifts from Mommy & Daddy and then by 9 am Gigi & Poppy arrived. We had our big traditional breakfast with belgian waffles, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, etc and then went in for round 2. Allie opened present after present and one by one her doll house quickly became filled with lots of goodies. Baby Hunter got his first pair of baby Uggs, clothes, a choo choo train, 'baby's first toolbox', and lots of books. Christmas was a lot of fun, the day flew by and by 1 o'clock Allie had fallen asleep. Mommy & Daddy did not really exchange gifts this year as the new stainless steel appliances we purchased back in October were our 'early Christmas present' to each other. Hunter was only 6 weeks old on Christmas Day so I am sure next Christmas will be much more enjoyable for him :-)

Christmas Eve

This year we decided to try out the children's Christmas Eve service at our church which was held at 3 o'clock. This service had more children than I had ever seen in one place-the whole auditorium was packed! Allie was even a little taken back by all of the people and was not her usual happy self. Hunter slept through the whole service and did great, as usual. The service was an interactive service where they ask the children in the congregation to participate and come up on the stage, but Allie was not interested. After church we went to dinner at Crab Louie's or as Allie calls it 'Crab Loulie's' haha.

The children were out late that night and by the time we got home and put them to bed we had forgotten all about leaving milk and cookies out for Santa. But luckily Santa still stopped at our house...

*S*N*O*W*D*A*Y

Friday evening around 5 pm the snow started falling and when we woke up Saturday morning the ground was covered with 10+ inches of snow! Allie got bundled up in her snow boots, snow pants & hat & gloves and went out to play in the snow with Daddy! Luckily Clint was off of work this Saturday and was able to play outside with Allie and make a snow man!

Santa Visit 2009

We went to see Santa at Short Pump Mall and Hunter opened his eyes and checked ole' Santa out but as for Allie, she wouldnt get near him. Santa even had lolli pops but that didnt matter to her. She refused to even come near him to tell him what she wanted for Christmas. Hunter sat with Santa and luckily the photographer was able to convince Allie to sit on the reindeer in front of Santa for the picture. They tried to block my mom taking pictures with the digital camera, literally jumping in front of her when she would try to take a picture, so the one above is the best we could do. We did purchase a package but they still were pretty fiesty about us taking our own pictures even though everyone else was doing the same thing. All in all the pictures the photographer took turned out really cute! And best of all there was no line because we went during the week around lunch time!

Hunter's First Garden Festival of Lights

We ventured out to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens for the holiday lights display this past weekend. It was great weather compared to last year when we froze! Allie loved seeing all of the lights and baby Hunter slept through most of it. The theme this year was butterflies, so there were butterflies made out of extravagantly creative bright lights. We had dinner to celebrate my Dad's birthday at the Tea House and the baby slept through that also. It was his very first time to go out to a restaurant. We were able to take our holiday Christmas card picture and bypass going to Sear's portrait studio all together this year. Saved us time, money and lots of germs!