Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was great. We followed our usual routine of going to Grandma's cabin with the Harris family on Thursday. The great-grandchildren count is still growing at 5, so we all tried to bring something to keep them occupied. By far, the child favorite was something Mom brought - play snow! I don't know what it really is, but you add a little water and it makes beautiful powdery snow that the kids had a ball playing in, hiding stuff, and surprisingly not eating.
We then go Friday to a "Wootering" as I like to call it. This is Neil's Mom's side of the family, which she hosted at her house. We had an untraditional Thanksgiving meal of everyone's favorite dishes, whether is was chicken stew, meatloaf, sweet potato casserole, stuffed mushrooms, etc. It was awesome!
All our weekends from Thanksgiving to Christmas were booked up except the first one, and Neil and I had a few extra vacation days to burn. We may have started a new tradition by taking a few days the weekend after Thanksgiving to go to Blowing Rock/Boone - just the 3 of us. We stayed at a little Inn in Blowing Rock, shopped, played at the park, saw some snow and fully intended to get a Christmas tree. Unfortunately, the snow came down pretty hard and we had to head back early and the parkway and pathway to the tree farms were shut down. We actually came back to Charlotte and got our tree, but I was happy to find they had been imported from a tree farm in Boone - so we came full circle. We still had an awesome time. There are more pictures lumped in with the Christmas ones.
Christmas
This Christmas we decided it was time for us to spend Christmas Eve at our house, so Olivia could wake up at home. We still went to all functions we would normally attend, but drove back to Charlotte. Sounds crazy, and it was a little, but we had a great Christmas morning and still made to Mocksville in time to wake Landon up! Our schedule went: Christmas Eve to Meena's house with immediate family, then Grandma's cabin for extended Harris family Christmas, then back to Charlotte, then Santa at our house Christmas morning, then to Mocksville for my family Christmas, then to Neil's Aunt Lisa's for extended family Christmas and finally back to Charlotte again. Olivia was exhausted from opening gifts if that is possible.
I think my favorite part of Christmas was of course Olivia and her reaction to Santa. This is the first year she really "got it." It also posed new problems for me when I made sure she understood that Christmas really was about Jesus and how it was his birthday. She was really excited for the big guy's birthday, just as she is her own. I answered her questions as honestly as I could, which included the fact that Christmas is about giving. God gave us Jesus, and Jesus gave to others and gives us hope, and St. Nick gave to others in honor of Jesus, and we give to others to also honor the love of giving just as Jesus did and does. And then there was "Stanky" and "them deers."
"Stanky" is our Elf on the Shelf, or sink, or shoe, or TV or tree, etc. Olivia finally named him this year, and while original, I was corrected many times by her on my pronunciation. It was not "Stinky", but "Stanky" and actually more like "Stankaaaay." She liked the idea of him, but honestly could not have cared less if he did go back every night to tell Santa on her. On Christmas morning, Neil and I could hardly wait for her to see what Santa brought. Only Olivia...she walked in the living room, and immediately stopped dead in her tracks with a furrowed brow. She stood still surveying the room for at least 30 seconds. Very seriously, still furrowed, she walked over to the coffee table where Santa's goodies were (cookies, carrots and milk). She looked at it, and said, "Them deers made a mess, and Santa didn't eat all his cookies." We encouraged her to turn around and see what Santa brought her. She said she would after she finished his cookies. She did. When she saw all the stuff, she studied more. She went systematically left to right checking out, opening and playing with each item, one at a time. Like a typewriter. She really did love all her gifts, but that wasn't apparent until she was showing them to someone else. Basically, she was either trying to figure it all out, or was calling BS! It was hilarious, and totally not what either of us expected, which is what we should have expected from Olivia.
