Christmas is quickly approaching and for us our celebrations have already begun. We had a busy and full weekend of Christmas.
Saturday was a busy day - shopping, cooking, cleaning - with some fun thrown in as well. I spent the afternoon making spaghetti sauce with meatballs and Italian sausage. The evening was spent baking sugar cookies and Nutella pinwheels while Gabrielle and Ed were busy wrapping presents and building a gingerbread house.
Yesterday morning we attended church. Because of a couple of late nights in a row we did not quite make it to Sunday school but I'm just thankful we were actually early for church as opposed to running crazy late which is usually the case. The girls got to wear their new "Christmas" dresses. Growing up we always had special, usually new, outfits for church for Christmas and Easter Sundays - another "tradition" I hope to carry on. After dressing the girls they twirled and danced in their fancier-than-normal church clothes.
I hate the picture is so blurry - I have a feeling a new camera is in our not-too-distant future - but even with a blurry photo I think the girls are beautiful in their Sundays duds. *smile*
The choir performed their Cantata during the 11:00 worship service. I love our choir! Ed and I think they are one of the best choirs we've seen. The cantata was so moving. There were a couple of songs and moments of narration that literally brought me to tears. It was a great reminder of what this season is truly all about.
After church we came home to finish preparing for our first of three family Christmas celebrations. We hosted Ed's family yesterday at our house. Gabrielle was so anxious for everyone to get here. She had been asking for the past three days "Is this the day they are coming?" Unfortunately I was so busy preparing food and just enjoying the company, getting caught up and having some adult conversation I did not get really any photos. I guess the important thing is we all were enjoying each other's company and not really concerning ourselves with the capturing perfect photo moments.
The one photo I did take was our antipasto spread we "snacked" on before dinner.
The kids of course loved opening gifts and they were all so genuinely excited with each and every single one. Here are a couple of photos of Ed and Gabrielle playing with Gabrielle's new Lego blocks. This is her first set of Legos and she loves them but right now still needs help putting the pieces together and building. Ed is more than happy to help though since he loved Legos as a child (and in my opinion, still had quite a bit of fun with them!).
My favorite moment concerning the gifts was GrandDad opening his gift from Gabrielle. Our church had a Christmas Shop during their fall festival. I dropped Gabrielle off at the Christmas Shop with a list of people to shop for and a very limited budget ($10 for all five gifts). She was paired with a member of our youth group and was able to shop and wrap the gifts by herself. Amazingly Gabrielle has done a terrific job keeping all the gifts a secret so we truly had no idea what she got for everyone. I was in the kitchen stirring the spaghetti sauce while GrandDad opened his gift and all I could hear was a bunch of laughter. She got GrandDad a can koozie - a Carolina Tarheel can koozie!! Now anyone who knows us know we are Wolfpack fans all the way. We thought we had taught Gabrielle about our rivals! Ha! It was actually pretty perfect and ironic - Ed's brother graduated from Carolina so he told Gabrielle how great the gift was. Just too funny! We all agreed it could have definitely been worse - it could have been a Duke koozie!!! LOL
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| From My Little Sunbeams |
Saturday was a busy day - shopping, cooking, cleaning - with some fun thrown in as well. I spent the afternoon making spaghetti sauce with meatballs and Italian sausage. The evening was spent baking sugar cookies and Nutella pinwheels while Gabrielle and Ed were busy wrapping presents and building a gingerbread house.
 |
| From My Little Sunbeams |
 |
| From My Little Sunbeams |
 |
| From My Little Sunbeams |
Yesterday morning we attended church. Because of a couple of late nights in a row we did not quite make it to Sunday school but I'm just thankful we were actually early for church as opposed to running crazy late which is usually the case. The girls got to wear their new "Christmas" dresses. Growing up we always had special, usually new, outfits for church for Christmas and Easter Sundays - another "tradition" I hope to carry on. After dressing the girls they twirled and danced in their fancier-than-normal church clothes.
 |
| From My Little Sunbeams |
I hate the picture is so blurry - I have a feeling a new camera is in our not-too-distant future - but even with a blurry photo I think the girls are beautiful in their Sundays duds. *smile*
The choir performed their Cantata during the 11:00 worship service. I love our choir! Ed and I think they are one of the best choirs we've seen. The cantata was so moving. There were a couple of songs and moments of narration that literally brought me to tears. It was a great reminder of what this season is truly all about.
After church we came home to finish preparing for our first of three family Christmas celebrations. We hosted Ed's family yesterday at our house. Gabrielle was so anxious for everyone to get here. She had been asking for the past three days "Is this the day they are coming?" Unfortunately I was so busy preparing food and just enjoying the company, getting caught up and having some adult conversation I did not get really any photos. I guess the important thing is we all were enjoying each other's company and not really concerning ourselves with the capturing perfect photo moments.
The one photo I did take was our antipasto spread we "snacked" on before dinner.
 |
| From My Little Sunbeams |
The kids of course loved opening gifts and they were all so genuinely excited with each and every single one. Here are a couple of photos of Ed and Gabrielle playing with Gabrielle's new Lego blocks. This is her first set of Legos and she loves them but right now still needs help putting the pieces together and building. Ed is more than happy to help though since he loved Legos as a child (and in my opinion, still had quite a bit of fun with them!).
 |
| From My Little Sunbeams |
 |
| From My Little Sunbeams |
My favorite moment concerning the gifts was GrandDad opening his gift from Gabrielle. Our church had a Christmas Shop during their fall festival. I dropped Gabrielle off at the Christmas Shop with a list of people to shop for and a very limited budget ($10 for all five gifts). She was paired with a member of our youth group and was able to shop and wrap the gifts by herself. Amazingly Gabrielle has done a terrific job keeping all the gifts a secret so we truly had no idea what she got for everyone. I was in the kitchen stirring the spaghetti sauce while GrandDad opened his gift and all I could hear was a bunch of laughter. She got GrandDad a can koozie - a Carolina Tarheel can koozie!! Now anyone who knows us know we are Wolfpack fans all the way. We thought we had taught Gabrielle about our rivals! Ha! It was actually pretty perfect and ironic - Ed's brother graduated from Carolina so he told Gabrielle how great the gift was. Just too funny! We all agreed it could have definitely been worse - it could have been a Duke koozie!!! LOL
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