Have A Holly Jolly Christmas!

I can't believe Christmas has already come and gone. It goes by so fast every year. This year I had a particularly hard time feeling like it was Christmas, so it seemed to rush by incredibly fast for me.

The last week and a half before Christmas we attended two different parties at friend's houses- one was an ornament exchange (actually I am the only one who attended this one) and the other a white elephant gift exchange for couples. Both were a lot of fun and I'm very happy with what I brought home from both parties!
The white elephant party was a typical white elephant gift exchange with an equal amount of good gifts and hysterical or weird gifts. I went home with skull shaped cupcake holders, a brain shaped ice cube freeze, a bag of "blood bath shower gel" and a book of p*rn for women, which is the most hilarious of all. We had fun reading through all the pages of good looking men (clothed) saying things like "I did the dishes and the laundry, put the kids to bed, now I'm going to give you a foot rub" or "Keep both bags, I don't care what they cost, you deserve them." They just get better and better and will be a great gift for next year's gag gift!

The ornament exchange party had about 30 women with rules like "no crying", "don't get attached", and "if you get your favorite ornament in hand, you aren't allowed to leave early". It was a loud and crazy party. I was toward the end so I didn't have very many chances to choose an ornament or get one stolen from me. I started off nice and just opened a new wrapped ornament, not knowing what I'd get. I didn't really care for it, so thankfully someone stole it from me and I was able to steel these scrabble tile ornaments! I'd been thinking of making some like this, but legally stealing them was easier.

I didn't put the "Jesus" under the "Merry Christmas" on my tree- just did it for pictures

We also had two game nights at our house (adults only after kids go to bed), went on a date night, went and looked at Christmas lights with hot cocoa and cookies in the car, and hosted a Christmas Eve Eve party at our house! I was also able to start and finish a couple Christmas gifts, get all the packages mailed out and took our Christmas photo and sent out Christmas cards (SO SO SORRY to those who still have not received our picture- I have a track record for being really bad at remembering everyone!).

It was so busy and I tried to pack in a lot those last two weeks, mostly because I just wasn't in the mood and feeling Christmasy before that- despite the fact that all our decor was up and I was listening to music for weeks! I've always enjoyed stretching out the Christmas season, but now, more than ever, I am confused as to why people wait until the middle of December to get their tree and decorations up! The last two weeks before Christmas just isn't enough time to enjoy all the wonderful things I love about the season! We had a lot of fun reading Christmas books, listening to music, making cookies, and even got the rest of our leaves cleaned out of our yard! Below is a video of Hayden singing part of "Angels We Have Heard on High". It is his favorite song to sing this year.

Hayden, pretending to be Santa, rubbing his belly and saying, "Ho Ho Ho". 

Hayden pretending he's and elf and forcing Ginny to pretend to be Mrs. Clause!

Hayden writing his letter to Santa. It says, "I want a skateboard and a scooter". 

Getting ready to put the letter in the mail box. I wonder if the mail men think this is cute? If I was a mail lady, I would think it was adorable every time I pulled on of these out of the box!  Hayden got a reply from Santa via Saucy telling him Santa would do his best to get him one thing on his list, but there wasn't enough room in his sleigh for everything he asked for. 

As Dirk had his back turned Ginny climbed up on the counter to color. This little girl LOVES coloring!

For our date night we went out to eat at Outback Steakhouse. We were both nervous and we'd both only been there once (not together at different times/locations) and we both got food poisoning from our first visit. However, we had this gift card, so we were brave and very much enjoyed it this time! Then we went to Downtown Medford for our first time ever, hoping to see some fun lights and cute shops, only to find that Downtown Medford is really lacking in anything and everything... We'll just go to Ashland or Jacksonville next time! The only entertaining part of downtown were these signs we kept finding.

We finished the night off by going to see The Muppet Movie at the theater. We had 2 free tickets and Dirk grew up with the muppets so was really excited to see this. It was pretty fun!

For our Christmas light drive we loaded the car with fresh baked cookies and hot cocoa. We couldn't just drive around anywhere and find lights, because the town of Medford is either full of Grinches who didn't put up lights, or full of people who are just really trying to cut down on their electric bill. I'm hoping it's the second one. We figured only about 1/10 houses actually had lights up! Thankfully there were a few roads near-bye who were famous for their awesome light displays! Ginny's reactions to the lights were hilarious, but of course very difficult to catch on video. This video is not fun to watch, but if you turn your speakers up you can hear Ginny clapping, saying "yay, ooh, aaah" and other things. It's a few minutes long and not very exciting and I mostly just posted it for Grandmas to hear.

On Christmas Eve's Eve (the 23rd), we had a big gathering at our house. We both grew up with big gatherings for the holidays and we were craving a house full of people for Christmas. We had a lot of very yummy food and a lot of friends. Some of our friends brought their guitars and ukuleles and we had a lot of fun listening to their very talented singing, then attempting to sing ourselves (not sounding nearly as good as our awesome Samoan friends). We played some games and even had our friend share a spiritual message. It was a wonderful night and I was sad to see everyone go home, as I could have continued on for much longer! I don't have any pictures of the night, but I did take a picture of our dining room decor I put up just for the party. When we moved in to this big house I quickly realized I didn't have many decorations for holidays to fill all the big open spaces. ALL our Christmas decor filled the front living room, but that was it. I was lucky enough to walk in to Salvation Army on a day when ALL Christmas decor was 50 cents. I got this tree, the lights and ornaments and quite a few other decorations for under $15! The room still needed a bit more so I decided to go with the cheapest thing I could think of- paper! I had a stack of red paper and I put my silhuette craft cutter to work! I absolutely LOVE how the words turned out and plan to do more of these for next year!

I'll end this post with a few more pictures of our house elf, Saucy, who sadly had to go back home to the North Pole with Santa. She was a lot of fun and we look forward to seeing her next year!

I also got this reindeer for 50 cents from Salvation Army!

Notice my onion is trying to grow a new onion ;)

Dirk was NOT very happy with Saucy this day!