The Growing Caldwell Family

Charlie sang in the Christmas program for the preschool. His class performed two songs - S-A-N-T-A (to the tune of BINGO) and one that we practiced at home and he practiced at school until he knew it quite well, "Bells Are Ringing." I am guessing that they worried Bells Are Ringing might take a bit more effort to learn and so they asked parents to practice it at home. It didn't take too long and he could sing it: Bells are ringing, bells are ringing, baby Jesus born today. Bells are ringing, bells are ringing, baby Jesus born today. Celebrate His birth in Bethlehem. Celebrate His birth with joy! Bells are ringing, bells are ringing, baby Jesus born today. Bells are ringing, bells are ringing, baby Jesus born today. A sweet song that sounded so sweet when Charlie sang it! While he waited for his class to go up to sing, he got comfy in the pew and started to nod off! He is so serious during these events! I am glad that he pays attent

Sarah Graves picked out our cute Christmas pjs this year and with a little help from Lovie we had them monogrammed. I had visions of bight family photos in our jimmies and Aunt Nay came over to help us get those pictures. I just love this picture! I think it came out just perfect. I just love that she also captured us having silly fun together. The kids love to come in our room after dinner and rough house playing with the pillows and the blankets from the bed. Now we have photos to remember us having that kind of fun together.

Merry Christmas! I have so much to get caught up on from our busy Advent season, but I had to share these precious pictures with Santa! This has truly been a magical Christmas to be the mom of these sweet kids. All their joy and excitement has been wondrous. I feel so blessed to get to experience the holidays through their eyes.

The feast of St. Nicholas is a fun event for the kids. We have a pancake breakfast followed by St. Nicholas making the rounds handing out chocolate coins to the kids, and lots of craft activities to teach the kids about his generosity and why we celebrate him. Olivia couldn't resist Sissy's fun hat! Fun memories for the holiday season!

We kicked off the advent season with a spaghetti dinner and wreath making at church! Lovie and Pops joined us with Livy and we had a good time! Sarah Graves loves the freedom she has to be with her friends and feels quite comfortable going off on her own. Happy to see her feel so at home here! The kids have been enjoying the lighting of the advent candles and were very excited to get to the rose candle.

We went to Bulloch Hall in Roswell to meet with Santa and have portraits made. It was a really fun experience and the kids had a great time visiting the historic house and meeting with Santa. I didn't take any photos with Santa, but the photographer took some great ones that I will post another time. We had a nice long session with Santa and plenty of time for each child to tell him their list.

It has been our tradition since Sarah Graves was a baby to go to Home Depot and pick out a live Christmas tree. Each year they do different things to make it fun. One of their favorites is signing your name to a slice of the cut tree and nailing it to a board showing all the families who bought their tree there that year.  Decorating the tree is both fun and challenging! They desperately want to put the ornaments on themselves and I want them to have fun doing it, but also want to keep some of the sentimental ornaments from breaking.  Once it was all done, we are happy with the tree and you can't help but feel like Christmas when you see it! Sarah Graves was most impressed with the remote controlled North Pole Express we bought to go around the bottom of the tree!

We had a pretty relaxing Thanksgiving day. We watched the parade, did some cooking, and headed over to Lovie and Pops' for lunch.  Charlie helped mix up all the cornbread for the dressing and for cornbread muffins. He was really a good helper and started to get the hang of cracking an egg! While Charlie was great at mixing up the batter, my baking it was a little lacking. I needed a really big pan of it to make the dressing and when the timer went off, it looked done. I set it aside to cool and planned to make the dressing the next morning. Sissy and I were going to start crumbling it and wouldn't you know, it wasn't done through the middle! It was still a little gooey and not dry enough to crumble! I stuck it back in the oven for a while and let it finish baking. It turned out fine, but I was nervous it might not turn out! Turkey and pumpkin jell-o for my   turkeys! Sissy helped me make Grancy's chocolate pie recipe! She loves it wh