As soon as we left Pops and Memaw's house, it was time to head home and get ready for the Big Guy in the red suit to pay us a visit!!
The girls were so excited! They had been keeping track of Santa on Brenna's ipad through the Santa Tracker app all evening. I mean... seriously. A Santa tracker app??!! When we were kids...back in the olden days as my kids say... you would lay in bed and listen for the sound of sleigh bells! And in my opinion, that was way more fun than an app on an ipad!
As soon as we got home, the girls changed into their new Christmas pajamas from Aunt Bit. Our first item on the agenda was to put out the reindeer food! This tradition started for us a few years ago when my friend Alice told me about doing it with her grandkids. I mentioned what a neat tradition it was, and the next thing I knew, she delivered us a reindeer hay sack, 2 elf hats, a bucket to keep it all in, and MAGIC REINDEER HAY! And every year, her daughter Donna sends us new hay! I have the best friends- ever!
You can tell how excited Josh is to be taking a selfie with us! ha! Sorry babe- it's a necessity!
The girls love spreading the hay!
Aren't they the cutest elves you've ever seen!?!
Next we went in to listen to MeMawMom and Graddy read "The Night Before Christmas".
I am so thankful that Mom and Dad decided to do this book for the girls several years ago. I can't remember what year is was. It was either the year before she got sick, or the first Christmas after she was diagnosed. When we listened to it last year, I bawled. Even though Mom was still here with us last year, hearing her voice the way it used to be broke my heart. It reminded me of the
real her. The her before she was so sick. It also was a wake up to the harsh reality of just how sick she was last Christmas. When you are living it day in and day out, you don't notice how bad it has gotten for the most part. But hearing her voice made it brutally clear just how sick she was.
And this year wasn't much better. The sound of her voice made me miss her so much more than I already did. However, it was SO good to hear her voice. I long to hear it. And even though it hurts, I am so thankful to have this book with her voice on it.
Next up- Cookies for Santa!
We baked chocolate chip cookies earlier in the day, and they brought home oatmeal cookies from Memaw's house. Santa got one of each! And a glass of milk. I tried to convince them that Santa liked coke... but it was a no go! LOL They even left Chris a cookie! And both Santa and Chris got notes. Below are the pictures of the notes AND the replies that Santa and Chris left for the girls!
And of course we couldn't go to bed without checking just to see if Santa was up there yet!
And with that- it was time for bed! Santa was getting close to the U.S. and we didn't want to be awake when he got there!!
No comments:
Post a Comment