Christmas!

 

On Christmas Eve the boys made a plate of cookies for Santa and some milk and laid them by the Christmas Tree.  Peyton was pretty easy to get to sleep but of course Hunter was too excited to sleep.  He wanted to be able to go to sleep so Santa could come but he just couldn't!  Of course what kid waiting on Santa is able to go to sleep easily on Christmas Eve!

 

 

Good morning!  Merry Christmas boys!  I wish I would have had a video camera when I went in to get Peyton up because the first question he asked was.."Did Santa come?"  I had no idea he really was understanding what was going on. 

 

They got lots of great things from both Santa and Mama and Dada.  From Santa, Hunter got a marshmallow gun, a new Transformer sticker book, and some balls to pitch to him outside.  Peyton got a marshmallow gun, playdoh, and a Sesame Street sticker book.  Some other gifts they got Christmas morning was a new K'nex rollercoaster to build, electric toothbrushes, toboggan/gloves, angry birds toys, a Disney World book made through Snapfish, several books and a bible that Hunter can read himself, and then several other small things like candy.

 

We then headed to Franklin to eat lunch at Granny Ruby's house and it was wonderful!  We had a great time and the food was very yummy!  Hunter and Peyton had fun snuggling and playing with both Granny and Bre!

 

Then we went to Nana and Papaw's house and got some more snuggling and playtime and eating yummy food and opening gifts there with everyone! 

Aunt Amanda and the boys! 

Uncle JJ with the boys! We even got to meet and hold Britt and Caleb's kitten - Boots!

 

What a great Christmas!  We had a really good day and I know the boys had a blast from the minute they woke up til the minute they fell asleep.  It was a day filled with family and we loved it!  I know I say this a lot in my posts, but we truly are blessed with a great family!

Christmas in Fort Mill

 

The weekend before as usual, we headed to Fort Mill for our Christmas with my family.  One of our favorite traditions is making goodies and one of them being...sugar cookies!  This year the boys were really into the dough and icing for sure! haha.  It was a lot of fun, especially with Pop and Mimi's additional 100 cookie cutters they bought and with Amy's cookie cutter she bought in the shape of the leg lamp from A Christmas Story movie!

 

 

Both boys ready and waiting patiently for the opening of the gifts!

  

They got a lot of great things and I would like to say that I took lots of pictures of them opening it all but instead I was huddled in the corner with a stomach bug!  Fun fun!  I did get a few pictures of some of their favorites...binoculars and an angry birds blanket!  They also got some helicopters along with Dada that they have enjoyed as well! 

  

This is just a random picture I took while we were in Fort Mill of them playing on the computer together!  How sweet!!!  I hope they are always like this with one another!  It melts my heart!  What a fun Christmas in Fort Mill!

Have you been RACK'ed?

 This Christmas season, I had seen something on pinterest that caught my eye and I thought it was a wonderful idea.  It was taking a day during the holiday season and putting others first.  It was such a great idea that I decided that we should do this as a family.  So we printed up several cards that said, "You have been RACK'ed" and explained below that it means that we were doing Random Acts of Kindness for others throughout the day and wanted to do for others.  We bought candy canes, small toys, crayons, made cards, etc.  We then went around to various places such as a nursing home, the hospital, random cars, random stores, ect. and handed out things to random people with our cards attached to them.  At the nursing home we took handmade cards from Hunter and Peyton and candy canes to various patients throughout the home.   

We then went to the hospital and took toys to the emergency room where they keep toys for kids that come in scared or upset over sickness or injury and they give them out.  

 

We also went to the Dollar Tree and attached a one dollar bill to a couple of toys in which Hunter and Peyton chose and left them for kids to find.  Attached to each $1 was our note explaining what we were doing.  

 

We stopped random kids and gave them gifts along the way.  Some people were skeptical but once they allowed us to explain what we were doing, they were receptive and thankful for the gifts.  I wish I could have counted how many times Hunter said "This is fun!" or "Can we do this again sometime?".  We all had a great day and a day that we will never forget.  It's easy to sit here and say we did this, we did that, but really we wanted this day to not be about us but to be about the reason for the season...showing others how special they are and the love of God hopefully shining through us!  It is definitely something I hope that our family continues to do from year to year and will be something our boys remember forever! 

Christmas Program

Look at Hunter actually doing some hand motions.  We may not have heard any sound come out of his mouth with the songs but he actually did some of the sign language to the songs.  This was his four year Christmas program.  The kids get to sing some songs, Pastor David says a few things about the meaning of Christmas, and then we go to the kitchen area for snacks.  It is always a fun time and the kids do a wonderful job.  Great job Hunter! 

Day at the zoo

 

The day after the get together with friends, Dada had to go out of town for a business trip to Denver, CO so the Jenkins family stayed the night with us and we all went to the Greenville Zoo.

 Oliver, Peyton, and Hunter!

 

Aunt Amy and Uncle Chad also met us at the zoo and looked at all of the animals with us!  We had a great day with family and friends but sure wish Dada would have been able to go with us! 

  

Partying with Friends

We had a couple of our friends over for the first weekend in December and we had so much fun!  We did miss having the Smith family over but they were infested with the flu unfortunately.  It was a great time and I think the kids really had fun playing together.  Poor Ellison was the only girl but she hung right in there and was sooo cute!  We had a fun time and will have to do it again for sure!

Candy Houses

Hunter with his grand candy house that he created from scratch!  Each year the preschool invites parents in to help their kid use icing and candy to decorate a house and scenery on cardboard.  Hunter and I had a great time and I think his candy house was just perfect!  He and Peyton had a fun time eating it after we got it home and took a few pictures of him with it. 

Getting our Christmas tree

What a fun tradition...picking out our own Christmas tree off of the top of the mountain!  It was a gorgeous day and we had so much fun going from tree to tree to find that "perfect" tree!  

Donald Family Pics...

 

While in Fort Mill over the Thanksgiving holiday, we took a few pictures of the whole family together.  Some smiling ones...

 

  some silly ones...

 

some "hood" ones! haha  What a fun time we had doing these! 

Christmas card from the Bowmans

 For those that did not see our Christmas card...here it is!  We used some pictures that we took both on our family trip to Pigeon Forge and some pictures that we went down to Clemson to a barn to take.  I thought it turned out pretty cute and had some great pics of the boys!

Dollywood

 

As a tradition, we try to go to Dollywood around my birthday each year!  It is always such a great time to go because they have just put up all of the Christmas decorations normally right around then and the Christmas shows have begun.  It is always a great way to get the Christmas season kicked off and in the mood to think about what a wonderful holiday it is.  We had decided that we would try to get a few pictures along the drive over the mountain for our Christmas card but it ended up being so cold that it was hard to get a good picture without our teeth chattering or us having rosey red cheeks and runny noses!  So we just decided to redo Christmas card pictures later.  These are a couple of cute family shots we took though.

 

The huge Christmas tree in the center of Dollywood is always a pretty picture location. 

  

Even Britt, Caleb, Nana, and Aunt Amanda joined us for one of the days we spent that weekend in Dollywood!

 

 Cute picture of the boys in the park.  They have soo many great photo spots around the park during Christmas time!

Birthday and Clemson Homecoming

 

Happy Birthday to Me (Mama!)  What a great way to celebrate my birthday!  Hunter told Dada that he wanted to get me Chickfila for breakfast and that was going to be his gift because he knows how much I like Chickfila...which he is right!  So I got to sleep in while the boys went to Chickfila and got us breakfast.  Then during breakfast, my boys walked in singing Happy Birthday and had a great cake for me...a Little Debbie Christmas Tree cake!  Yummy!  It was sooo cute and they were so proud!  Thank you boys for making my day.  I also got to enjoy a little shopping at Old Navy with my gift card they gave me!  Later that evening I got even another surprise...a night out on the town with my hubby to my favorite expensive place to eat...Calhoun Corners in Clemson.  It was soo delicious and what a great surprise!  Thanks for a great day!

 

That weekend we then celebrated both Mama and Dada's birthdays again.  Aunt Amy and Uncle Chad, brough a Clemson cookie cake that had Happy Birthday on it to the tailgate before the Clemson game.  It was sooo yummy!  Then Amy and Chad so nicely babysat for Michael and I to go to the football game!  What another fun day!

 

  This football game was also the Homecoming game, so we got to walk around and enjoy all of the floats before heading to the game. 

Trick-or-treating

What cute boys!  Peyton was Mickey Mouse and Hunter was Spiderman!  They both had so much fun this year and were really getting in to actually understanding the concept of saying trick-or-treat in exchange for some candy. 

 

 

We are not big into going from random house to house to strangers so we did a few small things.  We first went downtown Clemson where all of the shops along Clemson Blvd come out and hand out candy to kids walking along the sidewalk.  They close down main street and just have the vendors out everywhere.  For the second year in a row, we met up with our great friends the Smith family and we had to get a picture of Mickey and Minnie together!  How sweet!  We then headed to Utica Baptist for the Fall Festival they do and the boys got to play several games and go on a hayride.  Then we finished up the night by dropping by about five houses in our neighborhood of people we knew.  All in all, I'm not a huge Halloween fan but we had a great night and tried to focus on the cute/candy part and not the scary parts and people dressed in scary outfits (which Peyton DID NOT like!)

 

I thought this was cute of Hunter showing off his loot! :) 

  

Happy Halloween

We decided to stick to something simple this year...a jack o' lantern face and stickers on all of the smaller ones that Hunter and Peyton had gotten.  The boys still loved it the same and we had a fun family night carving and putting stickers on the pumpkins!  Their favorite part of course was actually lighting the pumpkin, seeing it glow, and then getting to blow out the flame! 

Happy Birthday Dada!

 

Happy Birthday Dada!!!  Hunter and Peyton were so excited for Dada to wake up and sing Happy Birthday to him and give him his gift from them!  As you can see they picked him out what they thought he would love....an Angry Birds t-shirt!  Great reaction Dada!  What a good sport!

 

Mid-morning while Dada was at work, the boys and I set out to make Dada one of his favorites - a fresh strawberry cake!  We have such good little cooks on our hands and they loved every minute of the baking.  Mama however did not like one part...

 

 As you can see, the cake did not quite come out of the cake pans as expected!  It was pretty much a disastrous looking cake but it sure did taste good!  What a good sport the birthday boy continued to be! haha.  Thanks for being such a great Dada and husband!  We love you bunches and hope you had a fantastic birthday!!!

Campout

Hunter has really been wanting to go camping but we just really haven't wanted to brave it yet with two little guys.  Actually Mama is not sure she wants to brave it at all one day but maybe they will convince me otherwise.  For some reason, I'm just not the camping kind of girl.  I love to be outside and to do activities outside but sleeping is not one of them! haha  Right now, I'll take this kind of camping.  Hunter and Dada camped out on our back screened porch!  Hunter loved it!  They read books, made shadows with flashlights, and even used Dada's sky app to see where all of the planets and constellations were in the sky.  Hunter really enjoyed his campout with Dada, even if it were just on the back porch! 

Chuck e Cheese!

 

As part of a reward system, Hunter earned enough quarters to get to go to Chuck e Cheese!  Each night that he slept in his bed all night and did not get up until daylight, he earned a quarter and as soon as he earned 25 quarters, we were able to go to one of his all time favorite places..Chuck e Cheese!  Way to go Hunter!

 

 He was all grins with Chuck e!  We are very proud of him and how he has done so much better in his own bed at night!  Great job Hunter!

 

We even got to meet some friends to go with us!  Jenny, Cai, and Caleb all joined us for the fun!  Of course Hunter and Peyton loved having their buddies come with us! 

They are all so cute when they get together and play with each other!  We are thankful for our close friends the Harringtons!