All things Christmas-y 2016

This year's Christmas PJs!

I know, it's almost Easter and I'm just now finally getting around to reviewing Christmas. This post has been looming over my head, and I've been wanting to do it if only for the purpose of having something to look back on later. But, alas, busyness happens and the blog gets pushed further and further down on my ever growing to-do list! But here goes - a recap of Advent, Christmas, and all that good end of the year stuff from 2016!

As usual, I tried to incorporate "church-y" Advent activities along with secular Christmas fun. We did the Advent chocolate calendar along with the little Advent book tree that tells the story of the Nativity to help countdown to Christmas. We went to the Christmas parade downtown on the same day we met St. Nicholas at St. Mary's Bookstore. We participated in the Christmas Basket Program at St. Philip and also saw Opryland ICE! We celebrated St. Lucia Day and we also went on a tour of Christmas lights around town with hot chocolate in tow. We saw about a gazilion Santas, while we also made Christmas blessing bags to give to area homeless. We made Christmas cookies and decorated a gingerbread, but we also made Happy Birthday, Jesus cards and a birthday cake.

Along with the cookies for Santa, we also made a birthday cake/cards for Jesus

Sunnyside Christmas Lights

St. Philip Christmas Basket Program

Xavier's Christmas Party at school

Lissie's Christmas play

Christmas Card time

St. Lucy

Christmas Parade!

How many pictures with Santas and Christmas Trees can we get? I'm pretty sure there are more, but who knows what happened to them!

Christmas itself was lowkey. Justin worked both Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, so aside from Christmas Mass we lounged at home and ate and played.

Waiting for the "OK" to check out their loot!

Reading Santa's letter

She was actually quite thrilled by the gift of new uniforms, haha.

The rest of Christmas break was spent having fun checking out possible venues for Lissie's birthday party (we tried Sky Zone, Glow Galaxy, Above All, Monkey's Treehouse, to name a few) and taking a mini-trip to Memphis for Lolo's birthday. We also saw went to the movies and saw Moana and Sing!

Lolo's birthday was a perfect excuse to try
a banana pudding cheesecake in the Instant Pot!

New Year's was pretty uneventful. We celebrated the Noon Year at the library and then stayed up "late" having a Game Night. We ran in the new year early, thanks to Netflix's countdown videos.