Christmas Happenings | 2017

The post I’ve been putting off for far too long now — our 2017 Christmas festivities/traditions that I’m affectionately calling Christmas Extravaganza because it’s going to be a monster of a post (because…. pictures!!).

You can see us putting our tree up here and the girls in their Christmas dresses here (you don’t want to miss that one – these girls are adorable!!).

But the parts that you haven’t seen are….

Making Christmas cookies!  Peyton was struggling with not licking her fingers (because she’s 2.5 and all the icing and crumbs go straight to her mouth!) so we put her in charge of the sprinkles.  And she loved it!  Sloane got to icing her first cookie this year – what a sweetie, trying to steal a lick!

Christmas Dresses

The girls in their Christmas dresses.  Peyton was obsessed with hers.  She actually asks to wear it almost every day – it’s adorable!  Sloane just looks like the cutest little baby doll in her dress – I love the red on her!

Trimming the Tree

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, after family headed back home to Indiana, we put up our tree.  Peyton was so excited to help.  She was digging into the box of ornaments faster than Forest and I could keep up with her.  She tried to help with the lights too – you’ll see a picture below – and it was the cutest thing seeing how proud she was of her handiwork.  My favorite part of our tree is the personal ornaments – vacations or homemade ones and ones that show our growing family.

Thanksgiving | 2017

We celebrated Thanksgiving with my dad, brother, sister-in-law and nephew.  We cooked a feast for at least 20 and are still eating the leftovers but it was such a good day with all of us together.  This was our first Thanksgiving since my mom passed away at the beginning of the year and not a second went by that I didn’t wish she was here to hug, to hear her laugh, and to have her hold the grandbabies.  Although we all felt like a piece of heart was missing, we ate, we laughed and we were all together.  That is what I’m thankful for.

I also started a new tradition – starting with a plate of 5 kernels of (pop)corn and reading a short story about thanksgiving.

All the FALL things

We had such a fun time picking apples and pumpkins this year.  When we find a place we like we tend to stick with them year after year so it’s no surprise that we decided on Battleview Orchards in Freehold, NJ for our apples and Cheesequake Farms in Old Bridge, NJ for our pumpkins.

Peyton had so much fun picking apples this year.  She was running up and down the rows of trees and begging for another bite of apple.  She wasn’t the biggest fan of picking the apples herself but she most definitely enjoyed eating them!  Sloane fell asleep facing forward in the carrier just as we were paying, I couldn’t believe it but I guess when you’re tired, you’re tired! Forest made homemade apple cider later in the week with the apples we picked and it was absolutely delicious.  He did a great job!