December 23-24

The boys were FINALLY out of school last Friday, the 23rd.  They went so late this year!  We went to the Center for Puppetry Arts to see the Rudolph puppet show.  It's so cute!  It's pretty much just like the show - it's amazing!  We always follow a trip to the puppet show with a lunch outing at the Varsity.  Unfortunately neither of them would wear a hat, so there wasn't much to take pictures of.  But we all enjoyed some naked dogs and frosted orange.  Yum!  Later that day we trekked over to Marietta for another dining/activity combo.  We had dinner at the Marietta Diner, followed by a drive through the Lights of Life.  It's relatively small, and definitely not even close to the scale of Lake Lanier.  But it's not as far of a drive, and it's only $5 per car.  So we view it as a bargain, and the kids don't even know the difference.

We were pretty lazy for much of Christmas Eve, up until time for church (other than some cookie decorating).  We typically try to get there early enough to get someone to take our picture in front of the big Christmas tree in the church lobby.  However, we are discovering that it is getting harder to leave the house when we want to, and we ended up getting to church just about as it was starting.  So there was no Christmas tree photo there.  However, my mom was already at the house waiting for us when we got back, so we had her take a family photo before we changed out of our nice clothes.  We had our traditional Christmas Eve homemade pizza for dinner, before setting out some cookies & milk for Santa, sprinkling reindeer food in the yard, checking the NORAD Santa tracker, and getting the kids in bed.

The boys were SO excited for Christmas!  So much that we decided to put up a baby gate at the top of the stairs to prevent anyone from wandering downstairs before it was time.  We had also set our expectations for them as far as what time we were going downstairs.  Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean we have to get up at 5am!  They were both at really fun ages for Christmas this year!  We loved getting to take them to do all of these different Christmas activities, and just be a part of their excitement.