Christmas Eve Eve :)

Here we are at church this morning in front of the beautiful tree in the sanctuary. I love this time of year and how beautiful the church always looks decorated for Christmas.

We are both looking forward to Christmas Eve service tomorrow night. Hands down one of my favorite parts of the whole holiday season. I can’t wait.

Merry Christmas, The Thompsons

I wish I could send each one of you a special card this year. I am blessed to exchange with a few blogger friends, but can’t with everyone! I love receiving Christmas cards with beautiful families on them. LOVE it! This year we’ve received a few cards where I took the pictures and that’s always fun. :) I also love to send Christmas cards. To some our cards probably look a little vain, because it’s a bunch of pictures of ourselves…but who cares! :)

Christmas Love & Blessings…

 

 

The inside writing was a little too light but it said…”With 2013 quickly approaching we look back on 2012 and smile. It has definitely been the most trying year we’ve had so far, but we’ve come so far and learned so much. We can’t believe how fast the years come and gone. We are so thankful for each one of you in our lives. We wish you a very Merry Christmas an a happy and healthy 2013!”

and the back…

We wish you a very Merry Christmas filled with CHRIST, love, family and friends and a joyous, prosperous and healthy 2013!

Party Like It’s Christmas 2012

We’re about partied out, we have one more to attend but then we’re done. We’ll settle in for a longggg winter’s nap. Ha, I wish!

Just because this is a scrapbook for my scatterbrained mind, I wanted to recap on the Christmas parties we’ve attended this season. It’s always fun to get together with friends and co-workers.

The first Christmas party I, along with my friend Melanie, pretty much planned our work Christmas party. We did have a a little help from a couple of the guys, but not much! Dustin helped us out with games though and we played minute-to-win-it games. It was hilarious! I have several pictures from the party, but none of anyone but workers. We scheduled the party on a Thursday and a week earlier and had the best turnout we’ve ever had I think! (Which was grand because I broke tradition and scheduled it a week earlier and on a Thursday, not Friday.)

The second Christmas party we attended was at our friend Jackie & RB’s house. We had worked the Christmas parade line-up all day and were a little tired (and cold) but we got all dressed up for their party. I sadly don’t have a picture, but it was fun to get all dressed up and chit chat with a diverse group of people.

The next week (last week) we had the fire department Christmas party at the “Shoe Box”…which is the Shoe Loft dorms for college students. It’s an old shoe factory that’s been renovated and has an AWESOME food service. Seriously this meal was better than our normal Christmas dinner. I do a lot of public relations work for the fire department so we were invited. We had the best time. Kody had to leave to go tend to the dogs since neither one of us had been home but I stayed and played games until almost 9:30! I love those guys, they are a lot of fun and take care of me. :)

Last Friday we had the bank Christmas party. It’s proven the last two years to be a good meal and a fun time. They roasted one of their loan officers that’s retiring and I laughed and laughed. Afterwards we went up to Roper’s with Brian and Courtney for a little night cap!

Saturday started out crazy but ended very low-key. I worked Shop with a Cop and what a rewarding experience that was. I met the local law enforcement, firefighters, and other emergency service workers at the Shoe Box for breakfast. Again, another incredible meal. We headed to Wal-Mart and there were about 150 volunteers and 200 children to shop. I got to shop with 3 little kids. That’s what Christmas is all about, seeing those kids fill up with joy.

Afterwards I met Kody and we bought a pistol for me…that we later returned because it kept jamming. Not the best time to buy (the day after an awful school shooting) but we had been planning on it. I’m home alone a lot and we live in the country. People are sketchy, it just makes us feel better. We went to shoot afterwards…now we’re looking for another one since we took it back. Ha.

We rested Saturday night since everything had been so crazy! Sunday we ushered and my friend Myranda’s sweet baby Lyla and I matched. We had to have our picture taken. Aren’t the trees gorgeous in our sanctuary?

Monday night I had a City Council meeting and then Tuesday I had another work Christmas party. It was just for administration and was ok. I had to leave somewhat early and head to the fire department to take a picture while they were having drill. I got home at 9:30…long day! But a fun one.

Last night was my friend Ashley’s Christmas party. Kody had a ‘man Christmas party’ with my dad, brother, and my dad’s friends.

Ashley & Josh just built a beautiful new home. So much custom work in there it’s crazy, I love it!! We had a good time. It was mainly her teacher friends and me, it was nice to catch up with some of those girls. We had a great time and I enjoyed seeing their beautiful house!

TONIGHT is Christmas ‘fun’ night at home. We’re going to watch Christmas Vacation and make chex-mix. :) YAY!

Saturday we’re going to my dad’s work Christmas party. Normally he doesn’t do anything special (he has a jewelry store and 3 employees) but this year we’re going to party! Why not one more? HA!

Tomorrow work will be fun. It’s the annual Christmas fish fry. AKA not much work will be happening that day. I love this time of year.

I’m thankful things are starting to slow down. It’s been a wild season, but so good for us!

In My Dreams

Wow, I can’t believe we are days away from Christmas. 5 days to be exact. Crazy how time flies, the year has literally FLOWN by. In a way I’m not ready to let 2012 go, but then again, no time but the present to move on.

Christmas is always such a fun time of year. With this year being the busiest year of our lives we’ve played quite the socialites and been to nearly every party imaginable. (Ok, not really but it feels like.) 4 work Christmas parties, 3 friend Christmas parties, and a Sunday School party scheduled for after the first of the year! We barely meet ourselves coming and going and tonight is going to be a quiet night at home. The plan is to make chex mix and watch Christmas Vacation. We’ll see…these days nothing seems to go as planned.

We barely have any Christmas decor out, my tree is decorated and beautiful but that’s about the extent of it. In fact I’m ashamed to even say I still have a fall wreath on the front door. HA! Whoops, oh well nobody ever comes to see us. I feel like we haven’t really gotten to enjoy the holiday season at home like we did last year…but then again this year is so much better than last.

A year ago I was so sick from medicine I was on and became practically a vegetarian because of it…and was just all in all depressed that we didn’t have a baby yet. I’m ready to start those traditions with my household family. The dogs just do not get it! ;)

This year my dosage is smaller so I’m not sick and can handle to eat meat again. We still don’t have a baby, but I’ve been too busy to really think too much about it. Here’s what I do think about though…

Sunday in church standing and singing Christmas songs I kinda got teary eyed thinking how last year I just knew we’d have a baby of some sort for this year. My dream is to have a beautiful baby either dressed like this…

or this for a sweet little girl…

I LOVE Christmas plaid and green corduroy and anything monogrammed. *Side note* Kody does not like the little southern boy outfits, but he knows he’ll have to just live with it. Smart man.

So I get a little upset that I don’t get to hold a baby on my hip all dressed to the nines Christmas Eve, but it’s ok. Our time will come. We’ll be in serious trouble whenever the time comes, I won’t be able to hold back from buying adorable clothes like this!!

I’ll continue to dream this Christmas season and know that the season is filled with HOPE. We HOPE 2013 will bring us something special. I also hope for continued contentment. I feel like I’ve been patient and continue to remain content, regardless of how you read this post. My biggest peeve is when people have healthy happy babies and continuously talk about having more so they can ‘get’ a girl/boy…or planning baby # whatever when they leave the hospital. My prayer for those people is to KNOW you’re blessed and to be content.

What are you HOPING for this next year?

Day of Silence

Christmas Traditions

I’m writing this a couple days early for Kelly’s Korner. I love this time of year, everything about it just warms my heart.

Growing up we had traditions…when I was younger Christmas Eve was always Christmas with my Dad’s side of the family, then we’d go home, leave cookies & milk for Santa, and go to bed. We’d wake up Christmas morning and couldn’t go into the living room until my parents had the video camera set up….because Santa didn’t wrap our gifts. He would leave what seemed like massive piles, one for me and one for my brother. We would then open gifts from my parents, etc. Those memories are so sweet to me that Santa will never wrap our kids gifts. Too much work to do on Christmas Eve anyways….and I wouldn’t want to wrap them before and leave them under the tree saying FROM SANTA…

When I was in high school we started a new tradition by going to my Aunt Judy’s house on Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve service. We would play games, eat snack food, and just visit. We still do that and I love that. It’s a very low-key night, which is needed by that point.

My Dad owns a jewelry store. This is his REALLY busy time of the year and Christmas Eve is no exception. It’s always been somewhat of a family tradition to go help at the store on Christmas Eve. Men…they wait until the last SECOND to go shopping and so it’s a store full of men who are easy to help because by 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve they’ll buy anything. My Mom always brings lunch and we take turns eating and helping customers. Then we usually close around 4 and we just kind of hang around for a little bit. Fun times. Kody has even gotten in on helping on Christmas Eve.

Now on Christmas Day we alternate between my parents house and 2 aunts houses for Christmas with my Dad’s side. We do Christmas with Mom’s side after the holiday.

Since Kody and I got married we’ve only spent 3 (this year will be 4) of the 10 Christmases together that we’ve been together. We were together in 2003 and never spent one Christmas Eve or Christmas Day together until 2009 when we got married! Talk about neither one of us wanting to break tradition. Really we felt it was best to be with our families during that time. In 2009, our first Christmas together, we woke up at our house on Christmas morning and opened gifts, we also did this in 2010. It’s special to wake up in our own house on Christmas morning and open gifts just the two of us. I love that time. Last year we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day in Jackson.

The Thompson family has a HUGE Christmas Eve tradition that last year I got to first experience. John (My FIL) and his siblings (there are 5 all together) and their kids, plus grandkids, plus extra people all gather for prime rib, games, and Christmas cheer. There’s usually at least 40 people at Kody’s Aunt & Uncle’s house (the house his Dad grew up in). It’s wild, crazy, and a regular Thompson time. We will miss that this year because we aren’t able to celebrate with them until the weekend after Christmas. Our BIL, Luke, has to work.

I am thrilled though we’ll be at our church Christmas Eve. It is my absolute favorite thing of the holiday season. Love, love, love it.

A few things in my mind that I can’t wait to do when we have kids are…

Elf on the Shelf…I bought this in 2009 and he’s been waiting patiently in my Christmas closet since then.

Letters to Santa on Christmas Eve along with cookies & milk.

Christmas Eve church service.

Some type of special breakfast on Christmas.

Looking at Christmas lights and listening to Christmas music.

Watching Elf, Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Christmas Vacation (Just KT & Me), and Polar Express together…

And many other things!

What are your holiday traditions?

My Life (Lately) in Pictures...

Again, we've been busy...imagine that.
We've worked the Christmas parade as parade marshals...and I was proud of our fire department...

We kept Ella & Molly Friday night for a few hours. We saw Santa, ate pizza and ice cream and played!

And then our tree is decorated and most nights I just sit and stare at it.

Love this season!