The Growing Caldwell Family

This Advent season, I came to love an Advent song, People Look East . We sang it several times in church and I found an awesome version on Apple. One of my favorite lines says, "trim the hearth and set the table" and with just 2 days to go to Christmas that is where we focused.  Sarah Graves helped me get the gifts wrapped! It is amazing how capable she is. I prepared meatballs for our Christmas Eve dinner! We did some baking to get a few cookies made and dessert for Christmas Eve. Charlie took this picture of my favorite Christmas decoration, a nativity set my mom bought for me when I first had my own place. A good reminder that Christ should be our focus during this season.

The Battery did some cool lights and pictures with Santa to celebrate the Christmas season! We had one of those easy and fun evenings hanging out with Nay and Livy and feeling the Christmas spirit! Santa was so friendly! He talked to Charlie about how important it was to go outside and play when you enjoy video games.  We had a yummy dinner at Whalburgers. We had to wait a bit but we were in our own area, which was awesome because our crew was up doing the floss and all sorts of shenanigans! After a trip by Haagen Das, we walked around looking at the lights, enjoying the music, and watching the kids have fun playing. It was cold, but so relaxed and fun being together. Nay bought the kids these fun Rudolph noses! Charlie envisioned this picture and it did come out pretty cool! We will definitely plan to do this again next year!

I had the privilege of making it to Charlie's class Christmas party. Story time, snacks, and craft made for a fun time! So proud to be his mom and so happy that he lights up when I arrive!

Both kids sang in the choir during the Lessons and Carols service. It was a lovely service and such a nice way to keep the true spirit of Advent at the forefront. They both sang so beautifully. You could hear Charlie singing out and Sarah Graves rang the handbells with precision.

 December was incredibly rainy and the weather had everyone down. We finally had a Saturday with a slight chance of rain, so we grabbed the opportunity to have a fun and festive Saturday! We started off watching Olivia and her class perform Christmas carols! Olivia rocked her songs and her motions! Next, we headed to Ponce City Market for lunch and iceskating! We had been promising the kids to go skating and this was an awesome place to do it. The rink was small, but it wasn't crowded and the views of the city were cool!  Since we were already up on the roof, we had to give the giant slide a go! We had to have pic in front of this sign with the line from Home Alone We kept our fun and festive day going and headed to Holiday in the Park at Six Flags!  Charlie wasn't feeling it on many pictures, but he had a good time. Some of the best parts were short lines making it easy to ride Mind Bender 3 times without