This December

Well people, we did it. We officially made it through December and 2015 in general. Since we are in the middle of January, I finally feel comfortable saying that!

December and all the Christmas that came with it was hectic, but well, fabulous. I COULDN'T WAIT to begin all the festivities. I started pulling out all the Christmas stuff immediately, including this new Melissa and Doug advent calendar. If I were posting this on FB or Pinterest I would say that my 13 month old "just loved placing the ornament magnets on each day of December"...... but let's be honest, he was obsessed with dumping them out and carrying them all over the house leaving me looking for magnets all day. I feel like years to come there will be completely random refrigerator magnets adorning our tree.

Nevertheless, it made for an adorable picture.

Since the better portion of our Christmas decorations were lost in the fire, I got to do a little shopping to replace some of them. I saw this upside down tree at "At Home" (former Garden Ridge) and I didn't show Jeremie the picture until AFTER Christmas because I knew in my heart he would be rigging up a tree hanging from the catwalk over our living room.

For lunch, me and 'Lil G stopped at Cracker Barrel to eat. While it was easier to shake a bottle of formula and call it a day, it is SO fun to actually "eat lunch" with this little guy. He GOT DOWN on some Cracker Barrel biscuits. His mama's child.

Next stop was my FAVORITE kids' consignment shop, Once Upon a Child, because I wanted Greyson to wear something Christmas-y EVERY DAY. And let's face it-I only had 25 days to do it, so I wanted to get a lot of bang for my buck. Mission accomplished! I got all this for $35!!!!! 

The Christmas tree FINALLY went up by December 4th, which in my opinion was 4 days late. (It would have been the 3rd if my hubby wasn't OCD about his light-stringing technique. He's over there weaving and tucking and I'm like "Can we just get ON with it so I can hang the ornaments?!)

And this is my FAVORITE picture from December. Sadly I hadn't replaced our tree skirt yet, BUT everybody thought I was going for a "snowy" look. Y'all. This is a trash bag. That you pull up over the tree to pull it out of the house. (Genius.) But yes, to my favor, the right iPhone filter does make it look like snow.

Here's the rest of the house decorations........

And OF COURSE we hit up the arboretum for some Christmas festivities. I was so excited to take Greyson to see Santa and the live reindeer. They really milked the singular/plural version of reindeer, because I was imagining a herd. They had ONE reindeer. Poor Blitzen made the trip all by himself. It was still cute.

And fortunately we didn't pay a fortune and wait in a long line to see Santa, because here's how that turned out.

We still had a blast and loved the 12 Days Of Christmas exhibit! 

I took my mom and sister to the "12 Days at Night" when they visited and it was gorgeous!

And if you read the last blogpost, you know how our Christmas arts and crafts session turned out.

Jeremie and I did manage to escape for our 3rd Annual overnight Christmas date in downtown Dallas. The last 2 years we've stayed at The Adolphus, which we LOVE, but this year, I couldn't resist an amazing Groupon for the famous Omni Dallas And listen-it was FABULOUS. They upgraded our room so we had this amazing view. That's right-this is from our ROOM! Not Google Images, I promise! 

After a quick change of clothes and some hair teasing on my part, we headed to dinner at Texas Spice, one of the restaurants in the hotel. It was delicious! Then our carriage Uber took us to the Wyly Theatre for The Christmas Carol production. OMG, it was amazing! If you live in Dallas, you must go, but get tickets early, because they sell out fast!

After the show we headed BACK to Texas Spice because I had eyed some kind of Chocolate Peanut Butter Mountain desert and had to have it.  By 11:00, we turned into pumpkins and were in our pj's, cause we're crazy kids like that. Sadly, we didn't get to sleep in late because J had an emergency conference call the next morning! : ( I literally drove him to his partner's house at 7:00 a.m. in my pajamas. #thepartysover #adultlife #cinderella

But it was SO nice to be all dressed up and have some quality time with my hubby at a restaurant that doesn't have crayons and a kid's menu.

I was also SUPER excited to host a Christmas party this year! (I clearly couldn't host up in the Residence Inn last year. Well, I guess I could have invited everyone to continental breakfast....) Anyway, so I love the Tacky Sweater parties we used to host, BUT honestly, those are getting a little too common. When they started selling faux tacky sweaters/t-shirts at Wal-Mart, I thought it was time for a change.  Since so many of my girlfriends have babies, we ditched the hubbies and had a Girls Night In Pajama Party. I mean, I LOVE to get dressed up, but I love my stretchy pants more.  I think the other mamas appreciated the theme. We had a blast and also had a competitive round of Dirty Santa. Except we swapped socks, which was super fun.

A HUGE thanks to Meg Jones for being my personal assistant. She was in town with her hubby for a business trip and came over help me get ready for the party. And by get ready, I mean, she did whatever I told her to do: cut veggies, mix the punch, fix the centerpiece..... if I would have told her to clean my toilet, she would have. A TRUE friend.

Since we were going to Mississippi for Christmas, we wanted to have our own family Christmas here and let Greyson open his big gifts early. He LOVES his "treehouse".

That night we continued our tradition of drinking (hot chocolate!) and driving around Deerfield to look at Christmas lights. This is my FAVORITE tradition! I can't wait until Greyson is in a forward facing seat next year and can actually enjoy it!

So-the next day I sent my boys to Mississippi on a plane. I know all you mamas out there are wondering how I strategically arranged this. But we did it for lots of reasons.  I had a Christmas brunch to stay behind for and had done ZERO Christmas shopping. Plus, when we drive with G, we have to stop halfway and spend the night, turning 1 day of driving into 2.  So.... after I shipped my whole world off, I barely knew what to do with myself. No worries though, I pushed through. ; )

I went to brunch, did my Christmas shopping, visited a friend, and managed to squeeze in a trip to my favorite restaurant for a slice of peanut butter pic.

Two days later I loaded up the car and me and Manny took off on the open road. I was indeed super weird to be by myself for that long! 

I arrived in MS on Sunday and we started the festivities with Jeremie's grandparent's open house. Their home has more Christmas trees and nativities than I can count. I love it. TRUE Christmas spirit.

Nothing's cuter than a baby in a sweater vest.

Then we celebrated with my side of the family complete with all THREE grandsons under THREE. So crazy, it's like we went from just the cousins to double size!

 

 

Christmas day was a whirlwind, but a blast. Greyson didn't know what all the gifts were for, but he sure did enjoy them!

 

We kicked off the day at CC and Pop's (my parents) . He "mowed" the rug with his new lawnmower.

 

 

 

Cousin Judah assisted with the unwrapping.

Cruisin' in his new pickup truck. ; )

My sister-in-law took  Jeremie and Greyson for a spin on the new tricycle. Aftewards, I took Lauren for a spin, which only lasted for a few seconds before I literally ran us into a tree. That's right, with a tricycle.

Like I said, Christmas Day was hectic. I had totally forgotten to take a family picture that morning until I started thumbing through all your DARLING Facebook pics. Darn you Facebook. So about mid-way through the day, we decided we need to make some memories. Clearly, it was too late.

Judah is sniffing "Baby". Lauren is trying to fix his hair. Greyson has completely lost it. I'm tired.

There we go. This is the best we could muster up. Except my brother-in-law is the only one who couldn't pull it together. I have no idea what he's doing. Love ya, Gray.

Greyson loved his drum set! Fortunately it's not as loud as I was worried it would be.

Santa was tuckered out.

One more snack with Papa before we head back to Texas.

And this was the car. Jeremie told me: "When I say don't open the trunk until we get to Dallas, I mean DON'T OPEN THE TRUNK."

So we made it to this side of the Mississippi and one of Jeremie's favorite parts of the year commenced: Bowl Game season.  We had some friends over to watch the games and during halftime, the Dads to the boys for a spin around the hood.

Over New Year's Eve dinner, Jeremie and I were reminiscing about the ups and downs of 2015. We were almost nervous to say we made it through until the clock struck 12:00. But it did, and just like that, it was over. Hello 2016.