Santa's visit

This is out of chronological order, but too bad!

As mentioned, Santa came early to our house this year. Julia woke up first, and she and I scoped out the goods. We quickly ran back to get Audrey and Daddy to join us. Audrey's look of "Oh Yeah!" when we reminded her Santa had come was priceless, as was her hightailing it out of bed instead of burrowing under the covers like usual.

After checking out the toys, we looked in our stockings. Actually, no. After checking out the toys I made AK put on a shirt so that I could take pictures. Then, we got to the stockings. Julia upended her stocking, but Audrey took out 1 item at a time. At one point, Audrey got confused, looked at Julia's large stash and complained , "but I only have 1 of these..."

I reminded her that she still had a stocking full to pull out and all was well.
We're all smiles!




Ok, perhaps we're not all smiles, but we were silly.

And very protective of our new baby!

I love my new mug. Notice that dear daughter #1 has now decided to take off her shirt. Typical.

Our Christmas meal: sopapilla, fruit, eggs, sausage balls, and coffee/hot chocolate... complete with plenty of marshmallows.

A note explaining why I plan to always eat sausage balls at Christmas:
3 years ago, we had Christmas at home and I made sausage balls for us to enjoy that morning. The next day, we met Meme and Pop for a week at the beach. While there, 2 year old Julia came walking through the condo's kitchen and pulled a sausage ball out of her pocket that she had apparently stored there Christmas morning... yum...not really

I have told her this story every year since. She'll be sick of hearing it before long, but I'll always remember the "sausage ball in her pocket" story with a smile!

A Tennessee Christmas

341. Safe travels to and from Tennessee.

342. Generous family spoiling all 4 of us!

343. Meeting the girls' first (and so far only) 2nd cousin, Adele Coplin! These are the Bowman great grandkids.

344. Spending time with 4 of the 6 great grandparents.

Meemaw Taylor

Granddaddy Bowman

345. Managing a calm Christmas Day complete with a nap for 3 of the 4 of us. Julia was the only one able to stay awake!

346. The girls' pride when getting to help in the kitchen.

347. Seeing my brother! This is 2 times in 1 year!!!

I sure do wish we saw them more often. I feel like a mere acquaintance with my sis-in-law Kelsey. She's perfectly sweet, I just don't know her well. Ok, back to the blessings...

348. Getting to spend time with the sis-in-law I do know well, Amy, and her family. I'll post pics of them as soon as they Facebook some - HA! Right now, the only picture they've posted from Christmas has been this:

I'm not sure why, but I love that pic. Thanks Jacob!

349. Mammy willing to visit us in a few weeks to deliver the rest of the presents. She'll be here for my birthday (we won't yet speak of the number) and to see Julia cheer!

The last night we were in town, Julia woke us up at midnight with her screaming. Seconds later she threw up all over the place (including all over Audrey!). She was sick all night and all day as we were traveling back to Alabama. Not fun! I thought we'd moved past all this, but Audrey's been sick today. Let's hope the sickness stops with her.

Blessing 350: 2011 ending with a lot of wonderful memories left behind.

Happy New Year!

The Girls' Blessings

I'm glad that God gave us our family (Julia)

I'm glad God give us my momma (Audrey)

I'm thankful because God loves us (Julia)

I'm glad because God gives us my whole family (Audrey)

I'm glad because Jesus got born (Julia)

I'm glad because Jesus got us our rooms (Audrey)

I'm glad that God gave us His Son to die. (Julia)

I'm glad because God gave us our lamp (Audrey)

I'm glad because God came into our hearts (Julia)

I'm glad because God loves us (Audrey)

I'm thankful because God gave us Christmas to celebrate Jesus getting born (Julia)

I'm glad because God gives us our Christmas tree (Audrey)

I think that's enough (Julia)

NO! I'm thankful God give us our food, our kitchen, our TV, our Christmas tree, our lamps, our rooms, and our house. (Audrey)

I have one more, I'm thankful because God loves us and Jesus came into our heart. (Julia)

I'm glad because He gives us our movies. I got another one, I'm glad because He gave us our chairs. I'm glad because God gave us Momma's flowers. I'm glad because He gave us our dolls in the dollhouse... oh, and our pajamas... and my pajamas... and MY PAJAMAS! (apparently mommy didn't acknowledge her fast enough) I got another one, mom. I'm glad because God gave us our parents. And I got another one. I'm glad God gave us our table. I'm glad because God gave us our shirts, and pants, and our shoes. And my mom, my sister, and my daddy. I'm glad God gave us candy... (Audrey)

Blessings as Therapy

I'm on day 3 of fighting a cold, the first 2 days of which I couldn't stand for more than 90 seconds at a time without feeling faint. I still can't swallow without grimacing. My heads been hurting like crazy, and my neck has been painful to move. I still had to go to church Sunday despite my feeling bad because my oh so sweet husband kept insisting that I was being a wimp. (Although, somehow, on our Christmas Saturday, my wimpy self played with the girls, bathed the girls, painted 20 little fingers and 20 little toes, and made dinner all the while Sir Matthew took his 2nd nap of the day... just saying)

I'm feeling old because my right knee has really been aching the last few days too. I've visited "webmd" multiple times reading up on cold vs. flu, osteoarthritis, brain tumors, and meningitis. (I might have a dramatic tendency.) I am spending Monday - Wednesday as a single parent since Matt's working a couple of 18 hour days and a 12+ hour day before we leave for TN Thursday. And did I mention that Julia asked me last night why I had all those zits on my face?

You could say that my week hasn't been very enjoyable thus far, and you'd be right. Tonight, what set me off in a heap of tears was my car not starting. Great, just great.

The tears have dried now, and I'm hoping that my typing all this up doesn't set them off again. I'd love to go into the whole rant I have about stuff that's bothering me, but what I think would be more therapeutic would be a listing of blessings. So, let's go!

331. The girls, somehow, didn't notice my tears tonight. They played together nicely for the worst of it, and after I'd calmed down, they didn't look at me close enough to see my splotchy face.

332. The excitement the girls get of having a campout in the living room. We're having one tonight.

333. Being loved all the way to "eighty-one" or "ninety-two" or what ever other number the girls come up with that's "a lot"!

334. Not being stranded or in a hurry to be anywhere when we realized my car wouldn't start tonight.

335. Christmas break. I have my Julia back for a few weeks!!!!! I miss that girl when she's in school.

336. Health. Despite my dramatics on webmd.com, I don't think I've actually had to go to the doctor because I was sick in over a decade.

337. Chocolate from our stockings. It's needed tonight. (Although that won't be good for all my zits or my feared osteoarthritis! BTW. I had 1 bump on my face. 1!)

338. Snuggling with the girls at night.

339. Snuggling with the girls during the day.

340. An excuse to sleep on the couch (we're camping out, remember?) so that I can fall asleep watching TV and not have any quiet time to let my mind think. Thinking tonight would not be good.

Pajama Days and our Christmas Eve

Preschool Pajama Day was Tuesday.



Kindergarten pajama Day was Friday.


... and since I'd just taken a picture of Julia, Audrey wanted to take one too.


Soon after Julia left for school, I showed Audrey her video from Santa. She wasn't sure what to expect, but she wound up loving it. We watched it 5 or 6 times in all. Santa said she was on the "nice" list, but she needed to stop throwing those silly tantrums. I had to explain what tantrums were.



When Julia got home from school, I showed her her video from Santa

This is the look she gave when Santa told her to "be nice to her sister" - so guilty!


Fortunately, she wound up on the Nice list too!

Later Friday afternoon, we met Matt to look at the Park's Christmas lights and decorations. We'd played there the night of the Christmas parade, but I'd promised the girls we'd go back.

Audrey wouldn't slow down part of the time to take pictures. She was running and running and running. This is the best shot I got of her.


Now, Santa had to come early for us since we're traveling, so Friday night was actually our family's Christmas Eve. We enjoyed fine dining of Papa Johns pizza (Julia has recently decided that she likes pizza and has been begging to eat it!) After pizza, we had a delicious dessert of reindeer food, then we went outside to throw out a different kind of reindeer food! This magic reindeer food (oatmeal and glitter) shines in the moonlight and guides Santa's sleigh to your home.

Before bed, the girls said "good bye" to our elf, Elfie. It was so cute to hear them. Matt and I just grinned and grinned.

Matt read Luke 2 and Matthew 2 for our bedtime story, and then the girls fell asleep surprisingly fast!

Happy Christmas Eve to us!

Julia's class party

Matt, Audrey, and I joined Julia's class for their Christmas Party this afternoon. I brought a drink, cookies, and a piece of candy for Audrey to eat, but Mrs. Mosley had extra class goodies to share. Both girls loved all the sugar! Matt and I loved getting to spend some time with Julia at school.

Worst Mom Award

I might qualify for worst mom of the year for this one. Julia's been practicing the last few months for a Christmas musical at church. The program was Sunday and... here's the bad mom part... I didn't even remember to bring a camera. Fortunately, a friend of hers has a dad that is a photographer AND that friend was standing next to Julia in the program, so #1 bad mom wound up with pictures!

After the program, Julia looked up at me and said, "Why didn't you video me?" Oh, the guilt!

Elfie's mischief

Our Elf on the Shelf has been up to a lot this week. He's gotten extra comfortable in our home and has begun acting out! He's gotten into Mama's makeup and written the girls a note on their mirror using lipstick. They were insistent that Santa know that Elfie had been bad. After school, Audrey decided that she needed to clean up Elfie's mess.

Another night, Elfie decided to get into the pantry. He had a snack and then went ahead and prepped the girls' school snack too. Mama wasn't too thrilled that the prepped snack was so unhealthy. The girls, however, approved wholeheartedly.

We're heading to see Santa tomorrow (Saturday) night. The girls have already had Elfie pass on our request for a special visit from Santa and his reindeer next Friday night. Yes, Santa's visiting us 8 days before Christmas since we'll be in TN on the 25th. We would have had Santa visit closer to Christmas, say the 23rd, but in order to actually see my brother (ahem), we've got to get on up there.

Blessings 321-330

* 2 computers in the house so both girls can play online games at the same time

* Audrey making literary references. She insists she's a "hungry caterpillar" and needs snack after snack after snack...

* Extra time in the carline to spend making pom poms! I had 14 to do and they each took about 30 minutes.

* The excitement building for our first cheerleading practice tomorrow. Julia's cheerleading for Upward Basketball and I'm head coaching her squad. Saying I have no cheerleading experience is an understatement, but I'm definitely getting into the girly spirit of it!

* Our fabulous Christmas tree! (Can you believe Matt was the one who started pulling the tree and decorations out Thanksgiving morning? I didn't even ask (tell) him too! I was planning on doing it Friday instead. The girls had a lot of fun looking at the ornaments and decorating the tree. Thank goodness we had these little people to help us out by crawling under the tree.

* The fun of having our visitor from up north joining us again - Elfie!

* Cute Christmas dresses to wear

* A clean house thanks to our hosting life group this week.

* The cuteness of Audrey's snores.

* Homemade Christmas cookies