Christmas Morning

As the spring semester gets under way, I find myself missing the Christmas holidays.  We had a great time this year.  It helps just a bit to dig back through pictures....here are some from Christmas morning.

Christmas Eve

Gran and Jonathan came up from Knoxville on Christmas Eve and joined us in our festivities.  For our first Christmas Eve with the new screened in porch and deck, we had to make a fire and put our traditional Christmas Eve tree in it.  The fire was nice but probably unnecessary given the unseasonably warm temperatures we had this year.

 The living room decorated for Christmas Eve....this year, the tree took me 6 hours to put up and string with lights (does not include ornament time :)  On the up side, it had about 2,500 lights on it which made Emily happy!

Merry Dolly Christmas!

The Sunday before Christmas afforded us the opportunity to meet up with Gran and Jonathan in Dollywood one last time.  One of the great things about the DW is that they keep its decorations very current.  We enjoyed all the beautiful lights, a bluegrass Christmas show, a round on the Firechaser and an absolutely gigantic pizza!

Christmas Cookies!

One of the many advantages of my job is that I have days off leading up until Christmas.  I made good use of one of those days by making cookies with the girls.  Here we are preparing some Santa's Whiskers and Gingerbread cookies.

Notice I'm getting good use out of some Kitchen Bazaar classics....the apron and Kitchen Aid!

Decorating the Christmas Tree

I have to brag on myself a bit this year....each year when we put up the absolutely massive tree in our living room, I am told that there aren't enough lights.  Well not this year!  I spent the majority of a day setting up the tree and adding lights as I went....Griswald Style!  I set approximately 2,500 lights in the tree as I put it up.  The result was a celebration at TVA over the renewed demand for electricity!

Here are some pictures of the fun part :)

Lily's First Christmas Play

Lily got to participate in the Grandview Christmas play this year....it had a theme of Christmas around the world.  Lily is dressed for the beach because she was representing Jamaica.

She had a part where she read words very similar to what Linus reads in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.  I had some video of that as well, but unfortunately my phone maxed out on memory.

Bucky's Jingle Bell 5 K

 To celebrate my 37th birthday, this morning we went out to run in a festive 5K for ETSU.  Coincidentally enough, it is even named after me!  (technically, it is named after the ETSU Buccaneers mascot Bucky, but why let reality distort my dreams of grandeur)

We dressed festively and even had the stroller decked out in battery powered Christmas lights!  We had a decent time considering we were pushing the Duallie....somewhere around 28 minutes....way to go us!

PS - Chip Dawg....they had some sweet long sleeve, Dry Fit race shirts for this one....I'm thinking the Chip Dawgians may need to run the 2014 Bucky Jingle Bell 5K!!!