Wednesday, December 19, 2012

25 Days of Christmas: Days 9 thru 18

9. Annual Holiday Dinner

Every year we get together with this group of friends for dinner! This year we met up at local three for dinner and it was absolutely fabulous!

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 10. Pink Pig!!

Kellen did ride the pink pig last year, and his face this year looked exactly as it did last year, in a constant state of “what the….”. So much FUN! We met some friends there and amazingly we didn’t have to wait in line AT ALL! It was a Christmas Miracle!

All three boys with Priscilla!

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He held on to his ticket the entire time, it was so cute!

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OK, I think I liked that! :)

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Attempting the impossible….a picture with all 7 children!

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11. The Grinch

Our elf Mac reminded us it was time to watch How The Grinch Stole Christmas!  (I seriously cannot believe it took us this long to pull out this movie!)

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12. Atlanta Botanical Garden Lights

Oh wow, what an amazingly magical night!  We had heard about this event last year, talked to people who were going this year, and then Sweet Jack had a deal 50% off tickets, so I bought them and figured we would figure out a time to go.  And OH MY!  It was AMAZING!

We bought some 3-D glasses for the boys, Finn thought they were really cool and kept them on most of the time.  Bonus:  they work on ANY lights, so even ours at home!

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These were the Orchestral Orbs and they were AMAZING!  They lit up along with the music playing, the songs were great, the lights were amazing and the boys had a blast dancing their booties off. 

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Bonus:  Riley could watch the orbs with his new BFF!  He seriously loves this frog and still asks when he can go back and hang out with him!  :)

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Well, to be fair, all the boys loved him.

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Family pic, Riley says no paparazzi!

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13. The Nutcracker

The Atlanta Ballet produces a kid-friendly version of The Nutcracker, abbreviated down to only one hour, at the Fabulous Fox Theater (which is just an amazingly spectacular venue!).  A friend of mine was organizing a group to go and I decided to just give it a go with both Riley and Kellen in tow.  I hoped that Riley would be in to it and hoped that Kellen would be mesmerized by the lights and the music and the dancing.  I was mostly right!  Riley did love it and Kellen loved most of it, until he didn’t.  LOL!  But we made it 45 minutes in which is a success in my eyes!  Riley was very sad when we left early though.

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P1000677P1000679  nutcracker

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14. Spread Holiday Cheer

This is one of my favorite holiday festivities, where we go to the local fire and police stations, carol and bring them treats!

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Our first fire station!

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Then the police station, where the kids got Police Badge stickers!

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Waiting outside our second fire station!

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Singing!

Fire Hats!!!!

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15. Christmas Movie Night With Uncle Buzz!

Uncle Buzz owns every single Christmas movie, so we went over for a pizza and movie night!  So much fun!

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16. Snow Globes

Our elf brought us a snow globe kit!  He also hung a bunch of snowflakes from the ceiling, our house is seriously a winter wonderland right now!  The boys LOVED making these snow globes and immediately got to work on them!

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17. Teacher Gifts

We made the same gifts we made last year, chocolate covered pretzels and ornaments!  We started out with the ornaments, clear plastic ornaments, filled with glitter paint!

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Insert glitter paint….

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Then shake, shake, shake, shake, shake!!!

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Next up, chocolate and sprinkles, oh and some pretzels!

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Quality Control!

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18.  Caroling

Our annual babysitting co-op caroling event!  We did however get rained out this year…RAIN!  Gah!  We had faith that the rain would pass or be light enough for us to give it a try, but we were wrong.  :(  But we went ahead with the party anyway and then in the end sung Christmas Carols to each other!

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Vats of homemade hot chocolate!  If you’ve never had homemade hot chocolate you are missing out, holy moly this is GOOD!

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