Christmas Confessions

I haven't blogged in weeks -- mostly because my household has been fighting off cold after cold this month, we went on vacation, and little boy is getting his molars, nursing like a newborn, and waking up 4-5 times a night. As I sit here blowing my chaffed nose and sucking on a cough drop, I thought I might write a little blog post. I admit, I have nothing profound to say today, so it's time for some confessions...and to keep with the festive season...let's make them Christmas themed! :)

This photo has nothing to do with the post; I just wanted to share! :) We had a "most spirited holiday attire" contest at a work event and Scott and I went all out! We decorated tacky shirts, mine said CLASS (College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences) and Scott's said COBA (College of Business Administration). Those are the colleges we each work for. Scott won the contest...I think b/c he went all out with a homemade elf hat, green pants (though it's hard to see that in this picture), and he even shaped his beard into something a little more elf-like (again, hard to see in this picture).

 I wrote a similar post back in 2011 where I shared some confessions as well as traditions, if you want to read more!

+ I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life.

I'll let that sink in for a minute.

We DID buy it this year for only $7 

and I WILL be watching it this weekend!!

+ I can quote large portions of Christmas Vacation.

You can see what kind of family I was brought up in. ;)

+ I've never been to church on Christmas day. 

I have been on Christmas Eve a handful of times,

but only at Scott's parents' Catholic church.

I'm not Catholic, so it hardly even counts for me!

I didn't go to church growing up, and we've always been traveling

for the holidays, so we aren't home for the services at our church.

This year I'm super excited that we're doing our annual service day

on the Sunday before Christmas. It's not our official Christmas service, but it's

a time where we go out and deliver food and gifts to those in the community who otherwise wouldn't have anything. I've never been able to participate due to travel plans, so I'm thrilled to do it this year with my husband and son by my side. :)

+ My Christmas lists look almost identical every year. 

In fact, I almost get a little annoyed that people still request one from me.

With the exception of a few specific things each year, I basically just ask for gift cards, candles, makeup, and PJs. Scott wants guitar strings and PJs. Every.single.year. 

+ I'm still torn on the whole topic of Santa. 

Grayson is still little enough that we haven't had to make a firm decision how we will handle it. 

I do know that we want to forge new traditions, probably starting next year, where we have Christmas at home, do some community service, read Luke 2, and strive to keep it fun, yet simple. I like the fun traditions of Santa, but not so much what he represents nor the idea of lying to our kids. I personally felt pretty embarrassed and deceived when I finally discovered my parents had gone to such lengths to fabricate the whole thing for so many years. I think we'll probably still do Santa, but just make it clear that he's make-believe. A tradition, something that's fun to pretend, but make it clear from the start that the Jesus part of the holiday is REAL and the Santa part is NOT. But again, we're not fully decided on this!

+ I've barely given any thought at all to Christmas gifts this year. Our entire Christmas shopping experience happened in about 1 hour and 2 stores. We are scaling WAY back and only doing one small gift for each set of parents and a couple small things for Grayson. We're done going into debt trying to buy something for everyone in our families...especially when we can never afford really nice gifts anyway. We're keeping it sentimental and keeping the importance of love and family central in our gift-giving. We opted out of buying gifts for each other this year and went on a vacation to Gatlinburg, TN instead. It's all very different for us, but I LOVE it!!

+ I'm not going to do Elf on the Shelf. Like, ever. Not because I'm morally against it. It's just the very thought of it makes me tired. 

+ I don't like Love, Actually.

I watched it for the first time last year and I thought it was incredibly boring.

I sort of feel like it's one of those things that people don't really like, but they like to talk about how they like it because they think it's cool to like it. Am I wrong? Sorry if you loved the movie. I just don't see the appeal!

+ "Baby, It's Cold Outside" may not be the most fitting song for the Christmas holiday, but I actually get pretty annoyed when people call it the "date rape song." They're reading way more into it than was intended! "Hey, what's in this drink?" is not implying that he was drugging her! The girl is clearly being coy throughout the song and she's using the alcohol in the drink as an excuse for her not-so-lady-like behavior that will clearly be happening that night. I get it, she's saying "no" and the guy is being persistent and no means no and we need to stop sending the message that girls just need a little convincing (and maybe some alcohol). But I think it's pretty clear in the song that they are flirting and her excuses are half-hearted attempted to say "she tried" but still ultimately end up staying the night. Okay, rant over. Y'all find something new to complain about! :)

I think that's it for now, folks! Hope you're all gearing up for a great Christmas! :) What are some of YOUR confessions?

Our First Date

Scott and I had our first real post-baby date last week. Sure, we have lunch together every day at work and sometimes go out for those. And yes, we've had TONS of at-home dates. And there was one "date" to a work banquet, which probably counts but also doesn't because we were surrounded by coworkers just like we are every other work day. But last Wednesday, it was legit and way past due!

It was a bit of a hectic day and the promise of our date seemed to be hanging just out of reach for most of it. We helped my sister in law move, which involved some extensive cleaning projects and some actual moving of boxes and furniture. Earlier in the day, I stayed at my in-laws house with Grayson. We took a fabulous 2-hour nap which hasn't happened in a long time. Then, after lunch, we left Grayson with Scott's mom and I helped with the moving. During lunch, we decided to pre-order our tickets to the movie so that we would HAVE to go! Otherwise we feared we would get caught up in things and then it would be too late or we would be too tired to go out. We bought tickets for 6:40 and decided we needed to head back to the house by 5 to get ready. Well, we didn't end up back at the house until closer to 5:30. I decided I didn't need another shower and could get by with changing clothes, straightening my hair, and putting on some makeup. Fortunately, it did the trick and I still felt nice enough to make it worth it. We were only going to the movies so I toyed with the idea of just going as I was, but I knew I had to put a tad more effort into getting ready for this particular date!

My mother-in-law watched Grayson, and Scott and I went to a place in Marietta called The Movie Tavern. We sat in huge, cushy recliners and had dinner, Sam Adams Winter Lager, and a big bucket of popcorn delivered right to us! We laid back and watched Mockingjay on a gigantic projection screen. We have a dinner theater type place in Statesboro, but it's not nearly as nice as this! I was super impressed with the whole thing! I wish I could have gotten pictures of our giant beer and nachos, or my feet propped up on the recliner, but it was too dark! I did manage a really grainy and dark selfie! You're welcome.

After our epic movie experience (okay, I hadn't been to the movies since I was 39 weeks pregnant so it was a little more exciting than maybe it would be to others!), we decided to go in search of a nice coffee shop or cafe to have some coffee and dessert. Things got a little stressful at this time. Why are there not adorable and cozy coffee shops readily available wherever I am?? We aren't super familiar with that area so we started driving aimlessly while I consulted with my old pal Google. Every place we found seemed to no longer exist! I finally found a place that had good reviews and looked like a good option for us. I tried to use the navigation on my phone but it was taking forever. I plugged in our old Garmin GPS and it could not find the location. -_- I went back to my phone and waited for it to load (meanwhile we're driving in circles and Scott is getting stressed about the gas money and putting miles on the car {yes, really}). Finally, it loaded! And the place was only a few short minutes away! Hooray!

It was supposedly located in Downtown Woodstock which is a really cute and trendy little area. I was excited to try something out down there! We drove through the area where the GPS took us, but we didn't see the place. We decided to walk and find the actual address that way. It was a little chilly and misting lightly, but it was still nice to walk in the little downtown area and look at the Christmas lights. We came upon the address and--what do you know?--it was a BANK! I guess that place also no longer exists! Sheesh! What does a girl have to do to get a good cup of coffee?!?!

At this point we just laughed about everything and went to the first place we came across and walked in and asked if they had a dessert menu. It was a cool restaurant called Freight and had an antiquated train station theme. Unfortunately the dessert and coffee were way more expensive than we were hoping for and it wasn't really tasty at all. Of course when the waiter came by and asked if he was right about the brownies, we just smiled and said, "Oh, yeah! It was good!" Nope. Not really. But it was fun just randomly going somewhere and spending time together. Maybe next time we'll plan in advance a little more, but part of the fun (despite the stress!) was the adventure of finding something to do.

Another really dark picture...the not-so-tasty decaf coffee!

We got back to the house to find out that Grayson woke up and had been up for an hour! Eek! A little milk and snuggles and he was back to sleep in minutes, but I did feel bad that we were gone while he was struggling to sleep. Oh, well. It has to happen sometime!

All in all, we had a great time on our first *real* date outside of the house since Grayson was born! We'll have to do it again sometime! But first--family trip to Gatlinburg, just the three of us! Wish us luck!! :)

Lately...

Praying for:

+ I'm doing a prayer challenge, which I discussed here. Basically, I have planned out a person, issue, or situation that I want to extensively pray over each day. Some days I'm better about it than others, but overall it has been a good experience and I've enjoyed setting aside more time to talk to God each day.

+ Healthy pregnancies for a few more friends I found out about recently! :) Hooray for more babies!

Working on:

+ Christmas shopping. We are doing things differently this year and are not buying as many presents. It's a great feeling! Not because we're being stingy. I love giving gifts, but I think scaling back to just a few meaningful gifts for those closest to us is the best way to steward the money we've been blessed with. Scott & I have also decided to go on a trip instead of buying presents for each other.  And we made sure to spend as much money on those in need as we did on Grayson by participating in the holiday helper program at our church. We were able to bless a mom with a gas card and a 1 year old with some toys. :) 

+ Preparing for our trip to Gatlinburg later this week! Yes, traveling two weeks in a row. Eek!

+ Posting things on my new FB page: Bellies, Boobies, and Babies! "Like" the page to follow along with articles, videos, and encouragement that I post for families!

Hoping for:

+ A smooth ride to and from Gatlinburg. I'm nervous about the 6-hour car ride with Grayson during waking hours! We'll be as prepared as we can be with toys, books, snacks, and the DVD player. Any other pro tips are welcomed! 

+ A fun time in Gatlinburg! :)

+ Miraculous healing for a sweet baby who is still in the womb and will likely need extensive heart surgeries after he is born. 

Recently:

+ visited family for Thanksgiving. We drove up to Scott's parents' on Tuesday night, helped his sister move on Wednesday, had an awesome date on Wednesday night (more on that later!), stuffed our faces on Thanksgiving, visited my great-grandmother on Friday, went to my dad's house that night and stayed through Sunday, and had a big lunch with family at my grandpa's house on Sunday before heading home. Whew!

Unfortunately these crappy iPhone pics are the only ones we took on Thanksgiving! For shame!!

Reading (not many updates here!):

+ A Passage to India - yes, still! But I'm more than halfway through it now. I really enjoy the writing style but it's just not a page turner, which means it takes me an eternity to read it since life tends to get crazy! 

+ The Power of Habit - yes, still! But our office book club only meets twice a month now instead of every week, and we had a few off-weeks due to other events, so it's taking us a while to get through this one. 

+ The Bible - currently alternating between 1 Kings and Mark

Watching:

+ Divergent - I wish I had read the books first, but I never got around to it so I went ahead and watched the movie! I loved it! Definitely want to get caught up on the books before seeing the next one!

+ 22 Jump Street - eh, it's about as good as you would expect

+ LOTS of Sesame Street and Elmo's World!

+ Season 2 of Nashville -- obsessed!!!

 + I can't even follow current shows right now b/c I'm too involved with Nashville! haha!

Listening to:

+ Christmas music...just a little!

+ Pandora...mainly 90's Alternative, Taylor Swift, and Maroon 5 stations

+ Grayson talking my ear off! :)

Laughing about:

+ everything! Scott and Grayson keep me laughing all the time! :)