December 15-24, 2012 - Preparing for Christmas in Georgia

When we arrived in Georgia, it wasn't as cold as we had feared... the weather was actually fairly warm for December.  It was nice to be home again.  But it's especially nice to open up the house and give it a lived-in feeling again.  It was also nice coming in from Manchester because we arrived in the afternoon instead of at night.  As soon as I got home, I ran out to buy a Christmas tree.  And the girls did their parts.  They dug the decorations out of the basement and had the tree and the house decorated in no time!

We were eagerly expecting guests for Christmas: my mom and her older sister, Aunt Janie, and Bruce's mom and her younger sister, Aunt Marie.  So we did our grocery shopping and Christmas shopping and enjoyed going to some of our favorite places for lunch: Panda Express, Shane's Rib Shack, Wendy's, and of course, Chick-fil-A!

A few days later, my mom flew in from Arkansas.

I didn't have a lot of time to see friends while I was in town, but I've known Megan since I moved to Georgia, and we both raised 3 kids the same ages.  Here we squeezed in a lunch together while my mom rested at home.

We had some beautiful sunsets.

I didn't get to see my friend, Denise, last time I was in town, so we met for a Mexican dinner and my mom joined us.

The girls settled in to home very quickly.

I volunteered to foster some animals during the holidays and ended up with four kittens!  These kittens came from a wild mother and three of them never really got comfortable with us.  Here they are all crowded as far into this box as they can possible get.  This box was the length of a bed!

Bruce's mom and aunt drove from Nashville and St. Louis and arrived a few days later.  We anxiously checked the Delta flights every day to see if my Aunt Janie would get a seat with her buddy pass, but she drove the 2-hour drive round-trip to the airport twice only to find that the planes were all full.  It was very disappointing not to be able to spend Christmas with her as well.

Once Aunt Marie and the two Grandmothers arrived, the tree was FILLED with presents!  And every year, Grammy bakes all kinds of Christmas cookies.  I'll have to get a picture of that next year!

We enjoyed playing Mexican Train and Rummikub.

And Sequence.

The girls and I visited our church on Sunday.  Going to our church always makes it sink in that we're really home.

And Grammy baked gingerbread houses for the girls to put together and decorate!  Here she's mixing the icing while the girls construct their houses.

The houses have been constructed and will dry overnight.  The girls will cover their houses with candy tomorrow on Christmas Eve!

It's Christmas Eve and Bruce will be joining all of us women tonight -- we're hoping he doesn't have any trouble with his flights to and from Amsterdam today.

Jordan finished her gingerbread house first.

This is Reese's house.

And here is Brooke's.

Thank you, Grammy, for baking those houses!  This is Aunt Marie and Grammy (Effie) -- two sisters that have the most beautiful relationship.  I hope my girls become as good of friends as these two sweet ladies have been over the years.

We spent the rest of the day playing games and checking the Delta website to see if Bruce would make it home for Christmas.  We almost thought he wasn't going to make it because when he arrived in Detroit, all the flights to Atlanta were full!  I quickly searched the computer and we found another route for him through Cincinnati, arriving in Atlanta just after 6pm.  So we all dressed up and piled in the van.  We picked him up and went directly to church for the Christmas Eve service.  We were all starving and enjoyed some Domino's Pizza afterwards.

This is the last of my blogs until I go back to the U.S. in April because I left my camera there with all of my pictures from Christmas :(

Except I have some special news that I'm going to put in a separate blog next.  So stay tuned!

- Pattie -