Spring Blog Swap

I know I have mentioned that I signed up with Molly over at the Fuschia News to do a blog swap. I love the spring and I love to shop, so I thought it would be lots of fun. 

My wonderful partner was Tricia from Flip Flops and Guinness. She is so great! I'm so glad that she was patient with me... since I was a terrible partner and sent my package a couple days late! 

I had so much fun shopping for Tricia! I love spring and all of the colors and smells that go along with it! 

My package just made my day! Here's what I got: 

The loot :)

My sweet spring card! 

Awesome water bottle

I try to drink water while I'm at work and this sure beats taking my big yellow STL Zoo cup! ha. :)

Apron notepad, colored pens and 'N' recipe cards

 I broke out the notepad to plan our weekly menu! I can't wait to add some recipes to the cards!

Purple nail polish, sunglasses and a cute anklet

 Who doesn't love a fun nail polish! I am loving this color! It's on my toes right now. I'm always losing or breaking my sunglasses, so these are awesome. And I love the girly touch of an anklet!

On top of all that, she sent me a cute purse! I love to switch out my bags with my moods, so I like to have plenty of options! This is so cute with the flower detail on the inside!

Tricia- thank you SO much for being such a great blog swap partner and sending me so many wonderful goodies! :)

If you have not already, go on over to Tricia's blog! You can see what I sent her too!

If you would like to see some of the other packages, visit Molly's blog and check out the blogs that linked up.

Thanks Molly and Aly for hosting! It was so much fun! :)

Christmas in Franklin Part 3

Hey guess what... 

this is my final Christmas 2010 post! ha! 

Thursday morning we had a girls breakfast with my sister, Sara, before she went to work. After that my Grandmother, Anna-Kate and I went shopping! We needed a few things for our family gift exchange that night. 

We had a lot of fun shopping but poor Anna-Kate was worn out and she got drug from grown up store to grown up store! I decided to give her a special treat and let her visit the candy store. It's one of those grab a bag and scoop and fill places. Anna-Kate's eyes were huge when she realized that she could get any candy she wanted and as much as she wanted. I think she had a lot of fun scooping out the candy and it helped redirect her. Of course I watched how much she ate and she never really ate very much but it was the whole experience that she really enjoyed. Sometimes I think that's important. I worry so much about making sure they eat healthy and so I hold back on things. But I do like to let go every so often and just let her be a kid. 

We enjoyed a laid back day and then went to spend time with family. 

This is one of my favorite family gatherings... I really love them all but I always get one of my favorite things at this one. Boiled custard!! My grandfather's sister probably makes the best boiled custard! I'm still craving it. One glass was just not enough! ;) 

Of course I love getting to spend time with that side of the family too! 

Thomas decided to kick his legs up after dinner! haha! We all thought it was pretty funny! 

Greer is one of Anna-Kate's idols... this night she passed her love for shoes to Anna-Kate... 

monkey see, monkey do... :) I love this! 

She did have tights on but decided she was too big for them- after all Greer wasn't wearing any! You'd be amazed by how much Greer motivates Anna-Kate to wear a certain outfit or a certain night gown... even 6 hours away! 

We had so much fun! Plus we got to take home the cutest little basket. I'm going to put this in our playroom and put the kids toys in! The basket also had several Tennessee goodies, including the neatest little Franklin plate! 

We packed the car that night and headed out Friday morning. 

Anna-Kate does so good watching movies!! We had the best ride back! :) 

The entire back of the car was stuffed full! It was crazy! 

We stopped in Lepanto before heading home, but that's a whole other post! :) 

It is always so nice to go and visit my family. I love seeing everyone. I especially enjoy getting to share my children with so many members of my family. I hope that Anna-Kate and Thomas will share the same love for Franklin as I do when they get older. 

But as good of a trip as it was, there's no place like home! 

Christmas in Franklin Part 2

 Tuesday afternoon we went to my Dad's to celebrate Christmas with him. 

We watched Despicable Me... it was pretty cute!

Then we exchanged gifts! 

Anna-Kate loves play dough!! 

Thomas finally got into unwrapping presents only he decided to practice that on Anna-Kate's gifts! 

I think this was when she was doing her girly squeal :) 

It's true...

We stayed and played at my Dad's for a while.

Wednesday morning my grandmother had a special treat for breakfast. Krispy Kreme snowmen doughnuts! They were so cute!

Thomas loved them! Anna-Kate eventually left hers and Thomas didn't waste any time taking over the rest of hers! He kind of likes to have something in each hand when he eats. 

Anna-Kate and I met my very dear friend, Stephanie and her son Jeff for lunch at Chick-fil-a. Anna-Kate absolutely LOVES going there! She always asks if we can go to "chicker-way". When we were on our way she helped me find it and when she finally saw it she let out the biggest, girliest squeal!

We had so much fun visiting and playing. After they lost interest, we decided to take a stroll around Target and pick up a few things.

Jeff will be 4 in just a couple of weeks! He's so big!

Jeff helping Anna-Kate unbuckle... it was so sweet!

When we got back Thomas woke up just in time for a snack while I got dinner ready! He loves eating apples. I have to watch him because he will just pick one up and bite into it but he doesn't have enough teeth to really chew the peel well.

Anna-Kate is my clementine girl. She could eat her weight in clementines if I let her! (Don't worry, I don't!)

My mom and sisters came over for dinner. I made poppy seed chicken. It was really good! 

Thomas was a little curious about the girls in the bathroom... 

Aunt Sara was painting Anna-Kate's nails and then Anna-Kate got to paint Aunt Sara's! :)

So cute!

Lukey Luke playing!

My mom got Thomas the cutest set of wooden blocks! I think they are beautiful! I probably spent a little too much time playing with them... haha!

Anna-Kate got this CUTE little cooking bag with the wooden utensils and a box of white chocolate cupcake mix with raspberry frosting! I might be "playing" with this gift too... ;) 

Thomas finally discovered just how cool the tree was! Thank goodness it was towards the end of our Christmas so we didn't have to fight him too bad. He kept pulling the ornaments off the tree and bringing them to me- he was so proud of himself! 

I'm telling you, we are so richly blessed to be surrounded with such wonderful family! :) 

Christmas Eve and Day

What a wonderful Christmas we had! We have had a ridiculous number of Christmas "celebrations" this year but I am so grateful that we were able to share the holiday with so many members of our family. We are so blessed. Bear with me, I am going to divide up the events so there will be a lot of little posts and lots of pictures! If you don't want to read about it you can skip the next few posts!! 

I actually had to work on Christmas Eve. We had a very busy morning at work but I got off around 1. When I got home I was so tired but I still had a lot to do. 

I showered and cleaned and then I remembered I still had one gift to get. It was for a child so I actually decided to brave Wal-Mart! Oh my! It was horrible, but I got a great parking spot and had good luck. I had a few other things to get but it really wasn't bad. I got in and out fairly quick. 

Last year, we started the tradition of having Derek's family over for a Christmas Eve dinner. So this year we wanted to do the same but decided to change up the menu. I had several ideas but eventually settled on doing breakfast for dinner so we could all wear our pajamas. Then with the time constraints from working I simplified and decided on breakfast casserole and biscuits with chocolate gravy for dessert. I have a recipe in my Paula Deen Cookbook but I altered it a bit. It's so good! I layered shredded hashbrowns, french bread cubed, sausage and cheese and then poured an egg mixture over. Yum! I made two casseroles so that we would have some left over for breakfast! I normally would have made biscuits from scratch but I knew that I'd be working and would need all the time I had to clean and get ready so I bought frozen biscuits. I used a Paula Deen recipe for the chocolate gravy too. That was my first time making it and really my first time eating it. It is so good! If you have never made it, you need to! 

We were ready so we decided to try a family picture! 

After dinner, we watched Elf. It's one of my favorite Christmas movies. Second to all of the claymation movies of course! 

When everyone left we put Thomas to bed and then let Anna-Kate help us set the cookies out for Santa and the carrots out for the reindeer. Then we let Anna-Kate throw out the reindeer food she got at school. It was so cute! This year has been so fun with Anna-Kate. She got so into Santa! Once she got in bed it was time for us to get to work! 

Every year so far Derek and I have stayed up on Christmas Eve and wrapped all of the gifts except for one or two things and then set the gifts out and filled the stockings. We always have a lot of fun doing that. I had wanted to wrap the gifts sooner but Derek wanted to stick with tradition. So we played Christmas music and wrapped everything! I think we were more excited than Anna-Kate! 

Anna-Kate woke up around 8 and came into our room saying "I think we need to go in the living room and see if Santa came." It was so cute. So we let her go in and see the presents under the tree. She was so excited! Derek grabbed Thomas while she checked out her changing table and her pillow pet. 

We did stockings and then let Thomas see his gifts that were sitting out. He got his first Thomas the Train set and big box of wooden blocks! He immediately pushed the train along the tracks and made the motor sounds! Ha- it's amazing how he knew to do that!! 

I love how he squats down now! 

Oh and as you can see, Thomas is now walking all over! :) He walked around so excited for the gifts! 

We finished opening gifts and then played for a bit before getting ready to do Christmas with Derek's family. 

When we got to Derek's grandmother's we played for a bit before getting started on the gifts. There were 11 people so there was a lot to go through!

Thomas decided that this was the coolest place. Every time I turned around he was standing on that bench! 

Derek got a nice sports coat

Thomas wasn't so sure about how to open gifts but he had plenty of help! 

Thomas loved this glow worm! He would hand it to me and let me push the button and then he would rock  with it. So sweet! 

I got a Pandora bracelet with a treasure chest charm. I love it! 

Anna-Kate got pretty tired- we opened gifts for a long time! 

After we opened all of the gifts we went outside and let the girls open their new cars! haha! Anna-Kate was so excited!

We even got some snow flurries on Christmas day! I just wish some of it had stuck! 

After we got everything cleaned up, we ate and then visited and let the girls play with their toys. 

This is a horrible picture but I thought Anna-Kate was so cute in her dress up outfit! She's even got the little shoes on!

We got home and were all worn out! The kids went to bed and then Derek and I got things cleaned up. We had to pack for the Franklin trip too. We got most everything in order but still had a few things to do so we decided to hold off on leaving for Franklin until Monday morning.

We had a crazy Christmas day but it was wonderful!