The Holidays 2015

What a whirlwind this holiday season has been! I can't believe it's all behind us already and that by the next holiday season, P will be walking and talking (hopefully!)

Christmas 

Peyton's first Christmas was magical this year. It was so fun to share and create new family traditions as first-time parents.

Christmas Eve doubles as my dad's birthday as well. To make the day more special for him, my family has always gone out to some sort of show and dinner. With the baby being so young this year, we put that old tradition on hold and started something new. This year, my mom, dad, and brother drove up to our house for a fancy birthday dinner and game night! We ate honey baked ham, pineapple casserole, baked mac n cheese, brussel sprouts, and a vanilla bean cake! It was quite the feast!

After dinner, we put P down for the night and played dominos and cards for the rest of the night. It was a very different evening from Christmas Eve's in the past, but I really enjoyed the change of pace and getting to host my family at our house!

On Christmas morning, Ryan and I woke up bright and early (before the baby) to get some coffee started and enjoy a little time together just the two of us (while I pumped.) As we were sipping coffee, we opened our gifts to each other. I don't think we will always do this on our own while P is still asleep, but since we had such a jam-packed day, we wanted to use our time wisely and not feel rushed once the baby woke up to open our gifts. Peyton woke about an hour later, so we paused our gift exchange to get her out of bed, changed, and fed. Opening gifts this year with a 4-month old was fun and kind of non-existent at the same time. As I was wrapping her gifts this year, I got through two and realized this was silly because I would be the one unwrapping them as well. P loved all of her gifts though (wrapped or unwrapped) but played with the wrapping paper from our gifts more than anything else. Oh well!

Once we finished at our house, we got showered up and headed over to Mimi and Gramp's house for the Schoeff family Christmas. We started the event with some brunch. My mom made grits, a pigs in a blanket wreath, baked ham sandwiches, eggnog bread, mimosas, and fruit salad. Basically, we had enough food to feed a small army. Which was good, because we were starving by this time. After brunch, we opened gifts. Peyton got spoiled with her loot this year. That is one loved little girl!

Around mid-afternoon, Ryan, P, and I headed to our final destination for the day, the Smith household! We hung out for a bit and snacked on some apps before beginning the gift exchange again. We all wanted the girls to open their gifts before bedtime, so we started with just gifts for them! Again, P got loaded up with some great and useful gifts from Nana, Pop, Uncle Brandon, Aunt Rachel, and Leah!

The girls got bathed and jammied up (matching jammies from Nana and Pop this year!!) and we took a couple quick pics before putting them down for the night!

Susan made a big pan of lasagna for dinner which was enjoyed after the girls were put down around 8. We then opened our gifts to each other, finishing up around 10:30 at night! What a day! We rounded out Christmas day with some Cards Against Humanity, which we ended up playing until 2 in the morning. Unfortunately for me, P decided she wanted to hang out with me some more around 2:30 and we were up until 4. Boo. That made for one tired mama the next day!

New Years Eve/Day

To ring in the new year, Ryan, P, and I spent the night with Brandon, Rachel, and Leah! We got over to their house around 4 ready to kick off the New Years festivities with the biggest. diaper. blow out. ever. In her super cute New Years outfit too. It was my mistake really... I mean, how many time does P have to ruin an outfit while in her car seat before I stop putting her in them early!?

Once the mess was cleaned up, we were really ready to party. The cousins played for a couple hours before we put them down for the night. For the rest of the night, we decided to compete in an Olympics of sorts, playing Dominoes, Rummy 500, Cards against Humanity, and N64 Mario Tennis. Each place was assigned points and at the end of the night tallied everything up. Hinck was our big winner for the night! We ended up going to bed around 2, praying that Peyton would sleep through the night. Which she did.

It was the perfect way to round out the best year of my life so far! Happy 2016, ya'll!

Christmas Traditions

I don't know how you mama-bloggers ever get anything written. I started this blog post almost two weeks ago and have been working on it a little every day since then. I had a whole other blog post scheduled to post today, since it is mine and Ryan's third anniversary...but that'll just have to wait until another day! Happy Anniversary, Ry-Guy!

This month has been filled with new and old Christmas traditions! 

Visiting with Santa

Marietta square this year transformed into a winter wonderland, complete with an ice skating rink and Santa welcoming parade! Wanting to create some new traditions with P, we decided to check it out on Thursday evening. 

We got to the square around 5 and walked around for about 45 seconds before P had a major explosion in the diaper region. Luckily, this Mama can't be fooled (anymore) and didn't dress her in her fancy "sit on Santa's lap" outfit. After finding a place to get changed, Peyton was ready for a visit with Santa! Unfortunately, the line was at least 100+ people deep, so we decided to grab dinner first and then go get our picture. 

We ate at La Parilla, but the line there was really long also, so we didn't actually sit down to eat until about 7:45. Santa took off for the North Pole at 8:30 and by the time we finished eating, he was gone. Boo. At least we had some fun with our families and new friends in the area! 

On Saturday, we decided to try to catch Santa again, this time at a winter festival in downtown Kennesaw. We got to the festival about 45 minutes before it closed down to avoid any long lines. We got in to see Santa with no problems and even had a little time after to walk around the festival and pick up a Christmas gift or two. Peyton was less than impressed with Santa and let him hold her no problem, but we couldn't coerce a smile out of her to save our lives! Maybe next year. 

Christmas Cards

Making Christmas cards this year was F.U.N. and totally different/time consuming. Taking a good picture of my baby is easy and impossible at the same time. I mean... look at her, she's adorable. Unfortunately, she also can't sit up on her own yet and squirms all over the place so pictures are almost always blurry! All of this did make for some pretty cute outtakes though! 

Decorating the Christmas Tree

One of my favorite little family traditions that Ryan and I have started is the decorating of our Christmas tree. I love it because it combines traditions from both sides of our family. While putting the ornaments on the tree, we listen to the Alabama Christmas CD (which is a Smith tradition) and drink our first egg nog of the season (which is a Schoeff tradition.) This year, we got to include our little nugget, which made the process even more special. She LOVED staring at the lights and playing with the ornaments (that couldn't break of course.) 

The flowers in the bouquet I carried down the aisle THREE years ago today...still looking pretty good! 

Stanley/Stone/Smith Christmas Gift Exchange

For a few years now, the Smith's and the Stanley's have gathered for dinner and a white elephant gift exchange around the holiday season. Ryan and I have never been able to attend since we lived out of the state and were never around until right around Christmas time. This year was our first Smiley Christmas party! We all met at Brandon and Rachel's house to watch the Falcons (lose), hang out by the fire pit, and enjoy some of Brandon's famous smoked pulled pork and chicken. After dinner, we drew names and participated in the white elephant portion of the evening. The gift theme this year was "As Seen on TV." Ryan and I walked away with a "Car Cane"... (yay!) 

That's it for our holiday traditions so far! I'll leave ya'll with a couple more super cute christmas-y pictures of P-diddy...because, why not.