Hip Hip Hooray for Christmas Vacation!

Today is my last day of work until Tuesday, then only a three-day work week next week, then a four-day work week the week after that. Whoop Whoop!

It's sooo hard to make yourself get non-Christmas-related things done this time of year. I have such bad holidayitis! I'm just ready. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!

Safe travels to all who are traveling and the MERRIEST of Christmases to you and yours!

Tacky Christmas/Dirty Santa Party

Saturday night was our third annual Tacky Christmas/Dirty Santa party. We had so much fun! I put a whole album of pics on Facebook, so here is just a glimpse of it all. Can't wait until next year! :)

Neighborhood kids...

Happy Birthday, John and Claire!

Old and New Holiday Traditions

I have always been a sucker for holiday traditions. I just love them. I love spending time at my own house over the holidays, but Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without spending time at my parents' and grandparents' houses and in Vicksburg, too. If anyone has ever been married and has tried to split up holiday time in two separate cities, I feel for you. It's NEVER easy, no matter how many years you've been doing it. I think that's where the holiday stress comes in without a doubt, but it's all worth it.

Here are a few of my favorite Christmas photos and traditions...

Christmas at Granny and Pap's... Nothing says holiday memories more to me than spending Christmas Eve at my Gran and Pap's house in front of their beautiful tree and fireplace. Granny is a Christmas Day baby, so we've always just done our holiday celebration on Christmas Eve. We play Elvis Christmas albums on the record-player and open presents sitting on the floor. I just love it.

Speaking of Granny, when I was growing up she always had a HUGE Christmas Eve party in the afternoon where family friends would stop by for a couple of hours. When I was a little girl, this party seemed to last F-O-R-E-V-E-R because I was waiting on everyone to leave so that Santa would come to fill our stockings (he did the big Christmas gifts at my parents - just stockings for my parents and me at Granny's). In reality, the party only lasted from like 3 to 5 or something like that.

Anyways, I'm following in Granny's tradition of Christmas party hosting. Our third annual Dirty Santa/Tacky Christmas Party (the first year wasn't tacky) is this weekend, and I'm so excited! We had entirely too much fun last year, and the photo above is just a glimpse of the craziness. Fun times!

The Grey Family Christmas... this photo was taken a couple of years ago at a Christmas party at Katie's house, but we very rarely get a good pic of all of us, so here you go. Being an only child, I love being part of a big extended family. I love watching Ryan Hadley open gifts and can't wait to celebrate future holidays with more little Grey/Ferrell babies running around.

Our annual Grey-Gor Christmas Dinner with Drew and Kristin... this pic wasn't actually from Christmas, obviously. It was from my birthday weekend in New Orleans, but the Gorneys are one of our absolute favorite couples to do ANYTHING with. We have so much fun with them, and everytime we get together my sides hurt from laughing so much. Tomorrow night is our third annual Grey-Gor Christmas Dinner. This year we're going to Parker House, but we've done Shapley's and Ely's in years past. It's just a fun thing to do right before the Christmas craziness hits!

Christmas morning with Baby Brady... He's not so much of a baby now, but last year we started a little tradition of walking across the street on Christmas morning in our pajamas and having coffee (with a little Bailey's added) with Ben, Tina and Brady. This was him last year, his very first Christmas, and it was so special. This year he's running around like crazy, so I can't wait to see him open some presents. I love being around kids at Christmas, and this year he may even be old enough for his first Santa visit. :)

If I haven't bored you by now, stick around in the coming weeks for all the holiday wrap-up posts. And if you haven't guessed or if you haven't already read it a thousand times, this is my FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR!

Home for the Holidays

With the exception of Friday night, we enjoyed a completely and utterly lazy weekend where we didn't get out of pajamas for TWO WHOLE DAYS. It was magnificent, and we enjoyed every minute of it. It was so nice to be at home and able to enjoy our Christmas decorations and a nice, warm fire with the cold temps outside. Love, love, love it!

Friday night we headed to Vicksburg right after work for Ryan Hadley's first dance recital. She did such a great job and was SO adorable!

One of the songs she danced to was "Jingle Bell Rock," which yours truly danced to one year when I was little. Our big show was in the mall one Saturday before Christmas, and we were dressed in white jogging suits with little jingle bells hot-glued to ribbons attached to the top and pants. And don't forget the Keds. I still remember the dance, although I'm pretty sure Ryan Hadley looked a lot cuter in her little outfit. :)

And of course any night we get to spend a little time with Frances, the most precious and laid-back baby ever born, is a good one...

Both Saturday and Sunday we slept in, then woke up and made coffee and breakfast (a treat around our house), wrapped presents, then settled in for a day of cheesy Christmas movies, most of which were on Lifetime, ABC Family or Hallmark, although we also fit in Letters to Juliet, Pan's Labyrinth and Up. I have not a single complaint! It was nice to have a weekend like that to enjoy being at home over the holidays.

We did have to babysit poor Bentley when the weather got a little bad on Saturday night. To be 100+ pounds of solid muscle, he's the biggest baby I know... this is where we found him when it started to thunder. He, too, was glad we were home. :)

Now I'm all rested and ready for a couple of crazy Christmas weeks ahead!!

The elves have been busy!

All my Christmas presents have now been bought! I did the majority of my shopping online this year thanks to free shipping after Thanksgiving, so now I'm just waiting on the last of all the shipments to come in so I can finish wrapping. I'm THRILLED to be done shopping!

I may have mentioned it before, but I get a little overly excited when it comes to Christmas shopping. I just love it, and before I know it I've totally blown my Christmas budget PLUS some. Oh, well... it's only once a year, and it's not like I'm spending it on myself, so I can't really have a guilty conscience, right? At least not until I look at my poor bank account. Yikes...

On another note, I love the Elf on a Shelf concept, but does anyone remember these little elves from when we were little?

My granny had three or four of these little bendable elves as part of her Christmas decorations for YEARS. You could move their little legs and their hands velcroed around them in whatever position you put them. They came in different colors and I LOVED to play with them. I'm pretty sure she still has them, so maybe now they'd actually be somewhat valuable considering the book and one elf sell for like $30. It will be pretty cool to one day tell our kids that their elf on the shelf has been around for many, many a Christmas. Gotta love vintage Chrimmus decor... :)

Holiday Road

This weekend we took a family road trip to north Alabama to visit my grandmother in Decatur. It's a long five hours on the road, so thank goodness for satellite radio, Christmas CDs and pretty scenery. We got there Friday night and went downtown for a cold beer and a sandwich at this cool little restaurant/bar called The Brick.

On Saturday we had a little Christmas celebration with Grandma and decorated her apartment before heading to lunch at Big Bob Gibson's Bar-B-Q. This place has been featured on the Food Network for its white bbq sauce, and I remember coming here as a little girl. The plates are HUGE, even the bbq chicken baked potato that I got. SO GOOD!

After lunch and a little downtime in the hotel, we headed over to Huntsville and up to the top of the Monte Sano Mountains. It was gorgeous! We decided it would be a great place to come camp sometime soon. What a view!

Don't my parents make a cute little couple? :)

At sundown, the state park was closing, so it was time to drive over to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens for the Galaxy of Lights Christmas show. This is a drive-thru Christmas light display that has been featured as one of the top tourism events in Alabama and even in the Southeast. It was definitely something to see, and these pictures don't even come close to doing it justice. Oh, well... I tried.

We ended our busy day with dinner at Rosie's Cantina, and then we headed back to Decatur and back to the hotel. We were worn out.

Sadly, this is the only group photo we took all weekend, but it was SO GOOD to see Grandma. I wish we lived even closer. She enjoyed our visit, too. And while we may not be the Griswalds, I think we give them a run for their money on family road trips like this... :)

Goodbye, Thanksgiving... Hello, Christmas!

What a great Thanksgiving! We started the holiday with a trip to Hattiesburg to celebrate with my family. There was only six of us, but we literally made enough food to feed 20. It was a bit ridiculous, and we still have leftovers now four days later after eating it for EVERY meal since Thursday...

Here's Granny frying some okra as an appetizer... not that we needed it before the huge buffet of turkey and all the fixings, but it was delish, as usual...

Dad and Derek frying the turkey... we had fried turkey AND baked turkey. Ridiculously good...

Dressing, hashbrown casserole, peas and giblet gravy...

Rolls, yams, corn casserole and cranberry sauce...

If that doesn't make you hungry again just looking at it then something's wrong... not to mention TWO desserts (yes, again, for six people) - pecan pie and white chocolate Oreo pudding pie.

We recovered on Friday and decorated for Christmas! It was exhausting but so worth it. I've decided I could make some extra money for the holidays this year by charging admission to see our decorations. It's like Santa's workshop in my house. ;)

On Saturday we headed to Vicksburg for Thanksgiving again with Derek's family... we had TONS of delicious food once again and continued on our all-we-can-eat binge. Here's a pic of Papaw Gary with his girls...

We took it easy the rest of the weekend thanks in part to all the food we ate over the past few days and sitting by a warm fire in awe of the Christmas decorations. The tree is up, gifts are wrapped and it SMELLS like Christmas, which is the best part. You would never know it's not even December in our house. I LOVE IT!! :)