The Sweet Life of Reagan, Emmy, & Max
This Is Our Happy Place
I haven’t ever done real “Christmasy” portraits for the kids’ “Christmas” pictures. Does that even make sense? ha! Doing an ‘official’ session with them really stresses me out, but the end result is always good so it’s worth it to me! (Even is Max is royally difficult these days!)
Christmas morning was a lot of fun for the kids. They were very excited and seemed to really enjoy themselves. It is always a relief for a mommy to see her kids happy on Christmas morning!
We always make them go together into the living room to see what Santa brought them. Max just sort of started playing and minded his own business. The girls, however, were very dramatic about each and every thing they got. There were lots phrases like “Look here”, “Oh my Lord”, and “Awesome”.
We had a really amazing Christmas. I put together a really fun video of all my favorite clips from Christmas that I know that we’ll always cherish.
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“Oh, look, Barbie & the Pop Star- we can watch it everyday!!”
“Hey, I really wanted a Hello Kitty microphone like I asked!”
Max has always LOVED Blue’s Clues so the little notebook was a hit!
“Ahhhh, look at my brush. It even has a little heart on the bottom. This is the best Christmas ever.”
“A Camera! Look Emmy, it’s my very own camera. Thanks Mom and Dad!”
Reagan did a little bit of shopping on her own. When she spotted the plunger section in the store, her eyes got really big, and she said that was exactly what she would like to buy her dad for Christmas. ha!
Hello Kitty girl now has her own Hello Kitty Chair!
We were blessed to have a multitude of family to celebrate Christmas with us.
The Meredith men
Riley and Kaila’s 1st married Christmas together-
Nat Nat and Ben anticipating the birth of their 1st baby.
Jared and Ang-
Jeanie and Dexter (It should be noted that this was Dexter’s birthday, too.)
Max sneaking a pre-dinner roll-
The classic dessert table-
G G, Mom, Aunt Regina, Gina, Gran, Granny- our chef
(lucky us!)
My mom and dad put together a slideshow with pictures from our families’ past Christmases together. It was very special to watch it TOGETHER. We have been blessed to be together many, many years. Our family keeps growing larger so it is really something that we are all able to still coordinate and fit in the same living room together.
God has been so good to our family.
We did miss Aunt Kay and Dale. We were able to get an OOVOO conversation going so we did get to celebrate together somewhat!
Rick’s crew has certainly multiplied.
I have always done silly things for my cousins Roston and Brycen when it comes to their Christmas gifts.
I’m not sure that they enjoy my antics now that they are getting older, but at least they still humor me.
We were able to get my brother’s 1st bass and give it to him. The kids were really excited about the surprise.
Our attempt at a family picture- Someone, please tell me when this will get easier!?!
Uncle Jared brought out the old-school projector to go through some old slides from our childhood.
Look at me!
After Christmas at Gran and Papaw’s, we always go to Daniel’s mom’s house. It is a nice way to wind down. The kids weren’t quite winding down like I thought they would, but it was nice for me to just sit down and relax. The kids could hardly wait to open their presents- it was chaos. They always enjoy getting to be with their cousins at Nana and Papa Dave’s house.
Too bad you can’t put sounds with pictures! haha The kids were REALLY dramatic this year while opening their presents. I have a great video that I put together with all our favorite Christmas clips, but I’m not sure it is ready to go world-wide. 😉
I finally reached a point that I could totally take a break from business stuff and immerse myself with Christmas activities with the kids…. It really started to feel like Christmas this week.
We kicked off the week by doing our monthly nursing home visit. The children from the church did their Christmas program for the residents. They just loved seeing them in their costumes. It was such a blessing to see them excited and encouraged in the Lord.
My brother and I gathered at mom and dad’s house one morning at 4 am to make fried apple pies together. It was a special time that I will always remember.
While working on my Christmas cards, the girls were supposed to be drawing Christmas pictures on the back of notecards for me. I just wanted to slip a quick note in a few people’s cards and thought it would be fun to have the girls do some pictures on the other side of the cards. They drew a few Christmas pictures, but somehow started doing pictures of fruits and vegetables. Here’s a pumpkin, tomato, and strawberry.
Here’s one that Emmy drew that became quite the controversy between her and Reagan. Emmy said that she drew a Christmas tree and heart. Reagan said that the heart looked like a big butt and that we could not put it in someone’s card.
As I was driving home, my Uncle Rick had just dropped some hay in the road. He motioned for me to go around him, but when I pulled out my cell phone to take a picture, he went ahead of me. haha
Here they were sticking cotton balls to their noses with fettuccine sauce just to celebrate the fact that Emmy tried some pineapple at Gran’s and liked it! Silly girls! (lots of giggles)
Emmy wrapped up my pair of scissors that I was using to wrap gifts. haha Thankfully, she let me open the gift right after she wrapped it. ha!
Our first time making Oreo Balls- success!
On the way to church-
After church we had a LONG night of crafts at home. Max wanted to paint so bad so I finally gave in and let him paint for a while. I just went ahead and stripped him out of his clothes because he doesn’t have the reputation of being the neatest artist in our house. As you can see, he started getting a little carried away. He painted about ten pictures before it just turned into a silly mess. I tried to video it and was interested to see just HOW far they would take the mess, but alas, they didn’t draw the line at the appropriate time and we had to have some parental intervention before things got REALLY out of hand. haha
Myself, Lauren, and Daniel had a friendly facebook competition to see who’s Christmas tree was the best.
(1- me, 2-lauren, 3-daniel) Looks like Lauren actually won by FB votes (even with Daniel’s unfair campaigning!)
Crafting continued into the next day-
Sunday morning bath time-
We visited my dad’s dad’s house (My Papaw, aka Papaw Curtis to my kids) Here’s dad telling Max that Curtis is his Papaw, too.
After our trip to Scott County to see my grandparents, we went to Daniel’s grandparents to have Christmas with his extended family.
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This is a video of Max singing by himself. I am not entirely sure of what he is singing although I did hear him say “spider” a couple times so it could have been his version of Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Max singing Itsy Bitsy Spider with mommy at bedtime.
Watch Max and Emmy take art to a new level… How far will they g0?!?
An Elf Yourself video of us that Jared made. The kids loved it.
