Our Christmas festivities started on Wednesday, December 22nd. We went out to eat to Longhorn then to Galaxy of Lights at the Botanical Gardens. Lily loved looking at all the lights!
On Christmas Eve morning, Lily crawled into the den to see what Santa left for her under the tree. Santa brought her a reading chair, a walker, and a stocking full of goodies. Mommy and Daddy gave her a sweater dress with leggings, Veggies Tales Ultimate Silly Songs, and a laptop. We ate biscuits and chocolate syrup for breakfast then Brent read the Christmas story and we sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. After breakfast, we packed up and headed South.
Christmas Eve night we did Christmas with the Milstead side of the family, complete with steak and baked potatoes for dinner and a visit from Santa Claus on the fire truck (that Lily didn’t appreciate!). Although Lily got plenty of gifts, including a cute outfit and a shelf for her room, her favorite gift was Cleveland’s UNO Flash game. After dinner and gifts we headed to the VK’s house to spend the night.
On Christmas morning we woke up early to see what Santa brought to the VK household. Lily got a LeapFrog puppy that sings and can even say her name. Lily loves to snuggle with her puppy. She also got a turtle she can sit on and also sings and teaches shapes/ABCs. Lily isn’t tall enough to sit on the turtle, so she holds onto it and dances to the music, bouncing and swaying. We had breakfast casserole, grits, and monkey bread. By mid morning it was snowing and sticking, so it was Lily’s first white Christmas (and everyone else for that matter)! It snowed A LOT more at our house, but I’m thankful for the little that stuck here.
On Christmas afternoon, we went to Granny Rosie’s house for Christmas with the Wrights. Lily got a playhouse, a cooking toy, books, clothes, and a new car seat (which hasn’t actually been purchased yet because we can’t make a decision on what we want!). Lily took a long nap in the middle of opening presents (it takes quite a while to get all presents opened at Granny Rosie’s house…especially when you have 2 missing gifts and have to dump the 3 bags of trash out and rummage through everything looking for them only to find them in Ben’s jacket pockets). After presents, we ate the traditional meal with turkey, ham, dressing, green beans, sweet potato casserole, corn pudding, pineapple casserole, Cobb salad, deviled eggs, pies, and the BEST tea ever made in the South.
A Merry Heart 
So many things to comment on….
1-Lily is precious and so big…can't believe it's been a year!
2-Lily looks like she got just as spoiled at Christmas as Eli did! : )
3-I loooove pineapple casserole! mmm
Miss you! Hope to see you soon!