Christmas: Post 3

Christmas: Post 1

I love our decorated house. These pictures are mainly for you Mom as you never have seen our house here decorated for Christmas. Yes, I took the pictures you requested.

Christmastide come and gone

We had a wonderful Christmas season this year with family and other loved ones. I have two lovely boys that I fall deeper in love with each day and a wonderful husband who cares for us with a true servant's heart. We enjoyed parades, lights, baking, gingerbread house making with friends, festive story times at the library, sugar cookies, candy canes, the first snow (yes, we saw snowflakes fall for the better part of one day in early December all the way down here), fires every night, our Christmas tree, talking about baby Jesus, naming our Elf on the Shelf and seeing his new place each morning in the house. We bundled up each night and with our flashlights in hand we started our winter ritual of night walking through town. I am typically NOT a winter person, but I am starting to "warm-up" to this season as I am learning (through the eyes of my children) that with each new season there are new and wondrous things I had missed before. I love the awe on Alder's face as he gathers kinlin for the fires on every walk we take and his love of collecting other such things in nature like red berries and the droppings from the popcorn trees. I love watching Kingston explore the Christmas tree, its needles, and the barren outdoors. I feel extremely full as this year came to a close. I love my job, role as mother to these 3 I nurture daily, excited at the arrival of the 3rd little one in March, our families we spent time with over the holidays, a stable job for Jared, our good health, and mountains of other blessings that I resolve to focus more on in this New Year. 

Yes, my heart aches for other "things" like a bigger community, being closer to our families, an ease of finances, and so on but I feel overwhelmed with the joys in my life and I thank my God for those. 

I had collected lots of pictures over the last month and could not fit all of them into one post. I thought I would just post a series of 3 posts and let the pictures speak for themselves. I remind myself that one of the main reasons I keep this blog going (since sometimes I feel like not posting at all) is to have it serve as a scrapbook for my children and our family. I hope my boys will treasure these pictures one day as much I do. 

Enjoy! We hope your holidays were Merry and Bright!

Christmas: Post 2

In front of the Christmas Tree....Take One.

 Yesterday morning I thought I would try to take some pictures of them in front of our tree before church. As you will see I was only semi-successful. 

 Do you like Alder's outfit? I love the smocked shorts outfit made by a dear friend years ago and passed down to us. Yes, he does look like he could go yodeling in the Swiss mountains, but precious nonetheless. He insisted on wearing his wellies to church. What can I say?

By the last few shots I had bribed them with two jelly beans each....can you tell? 

Ha. 

Forgotten Thanksgiving

I love, love, love Thanksgiving. I love the day, what is all about, the turkey, the list of things that I am thankful for that go through my head the whole month of November, the gluttony, the laid back feeling that Thanksgiving carries with it, and the colors. I can get really annoyed with all the "Christmasing" that goes on before even the 3rd week of Thanksgiving. It drives me crazy that people decorate for Christmas BEFORE Thanksgiving, that stores have all their "stuff" geared for Christmas, and so on. I feel like, with all the commericalism of Christmas, that Thanksgiving is becoming a forgotten holiday. Anyways, I will get off my shop box. We enjoyed the holiday in Chattanooga with our families. As always it was non-stop fun from the moment we arrived into Chattanooga.

So thankful for wonderful families, healthy children, and the little kicking baby inside this belly of mine, my home, and so so so much more. 

 Wingfield Thanksgiving dinner at the Fairyland Club. The little table...Win (18 mos.), TH (23 mos.), Alder (2 1/2), and Kingston (18 mos.)

 The bigger but still little (because all 13 cousins are under the age of 8) table...Demi(6), Stoney(almost 6), Teddy (4), Shaw(3), Wilder (2), and Josie(4). 

Settle Thanksgiving with our beloved Great Aunt Nina. She is wonderful, full of joy, happy, still plays 18 holes of golf, and is in her upper 80's. We just adore her and my boys love calling her GGNina (that would be for Great, Great, Aunt Nina to them).

My Dad and Alder. My Dad is the master chef in all areas of cooking, but totally rocks the house on Thanksgiving Day. Alder is looking in (I think) total amazement at the size of the turkey. I am too. It was huge AND delicious. 

GGNina and Alder reading the story of Thanksgiving together as my Dad carves up the turkey.

Sweet boys intrigued by the fire. Poor Kingston. He did have pants for dinner, but they just did not seem to get on him after his nap.

Some of the delicious food and (drumroll please.....)

my Dad's gravy. It may just look like some super yucky goop in this photo, but I assure you it is not. It is certainly heavenly in all ways and if we could bottle it and sell it (hey, that may be a good idea) then I am sure we would become millionaires. It is a family recipe that has been handed down through the generations and its the only gravy I will eat. In fact, it has left all of us in the family utter snobs about gravy. All other gravy is goop if you ask me. Some of Jared's family came and ate Thanksgiving dinner with us a couple of years ago and they still talk about it. I should share the recipe because everyone everywhere should be able to take part in eating turkey with this wonderful gravy poured upon it. I'll ask my Dad about posting the recipe...he is sort of protective over it. Ha.

My Mom's beautiful table and in the center the famous and adored Cranberry Conserve. I make Cranberry Conserve for neighborhood Christmas gifts and I have people ask me all year long, "are you going to make that yummy red stuff again this year?" Here is the recipe. 

I usually triple the recipe and buy the jars at Wal-Mart, tie on a ribbon, and there you go. A wonderful holiday gift. The recipe comes from Dinner on the Diner by The Junior League of Chattanooga. I highly recommend the whole cookbook, but this recipe is a must. The conserve goes great with any holiday meal.

Sweet Kingston and my Mom making Thanksgiving cookies.