2nd Day of Christmas Giveaway with Whitney Capps
Welcome to our 5th annual 12 Days of Christmas giveaways!.
Each day I’ll feature one of my Proverbs 31 sisters offering a recipe, idea or memory and giving away a prize for the day!
Next up?
My fashionable friend and speaker extraordinaire:
“I love kicking off the Christmas season! Our family has a tradition of going to eat dinner at a nice restaurant to have a meal together.
Chad and I have four little boys 7 and under. My brother and his wife have three girls and one boy, 6 and under. My parents have celebrated the birth of a grandchild once a year since 2005.
So when I called to make our dinner reservation at Maggiano’s, I reserved a table for 14-six adults and eight children. As you can imagine a white napkin and real plates kind-of-dinner for our whole crew takes a lot of grace and a lot of patience.
We just enjoyed our annual tradition this past Friday night. Before dinner was complete I was exhausted. I had cut up four bowls of spaghetti, fed a wiggly infant, played several games of tic-tac-toe, snapped a few pictures, nearly spilled a drink and tricked my kiddo’s into trying calamari.
I ended up eating my appetizer with my entree. Both were cold by the time I got to enjoy them. As I took a bite and then passed out DS’s to the boys (a thing I swore I’d NEVER do at dinner), I looked around the table and realized I hadn’t had one conversation with my parents, my husband or my brother and sister-in-law. It was wild! And yet, simply wonderful.
I haven’t always enjoyed the chaos. I spent the first few years of motherhood waxing nostalgic about how nice it had been to go to an adults only dinner. Now, half a dozen years later, I have a sliver of the perspective Mom’s of high schoolers and college students have. It is true.
This thing called childhood goes by too quickly. I can’t believe I have a 7-year-old. I have a kid who rides the “Pink Pig” because it’s tradition not because it’s fun.
In seven more years, he’ll likely be bigger than me. All too soon, I’ll eat hot meals because no one will need me to cut up his spaghetti. They won’t wear matching sweaters or sit on Santa’s lap.
Our little holiday tradition might have been a three-ring circus but it was memorable. It was certainly improved by my choice to cherish the chaos. Maybe that should be the new holiday tradition for me. My youngest is 11 months old. Chaos is going to be my holiday companion for years to come.
Now this girl can handle a little chaos. I can bear it the month of December. A lot of chaos, though, and I can become unglued!
Sadly most of my chaos is self-induced. I’m resolving to make 2013 different. Wanna join me?
I’m giving away a Let.It.Go kit to one lucky winner. It includes a copy of the book, the six-week teaching dvd and companion Bible study workbook. Karen’s latest book is a tremendous gift for those of us who obsessively claw after control and peace. (Not to give away the ending, but Karen kind of helps us understand how the two are often mutually exclusive. Ugh!)
I promise you’ll love this resource. If you are the winner of this giveaway, Karen will give me your name and email address. I’ll contact the Proverbs 31 office and have them ship your kit to you!
Thanks for having me, Karen. You are as hospitable in cyberspace as you are in real life. (Oh, and for more fun pics from the night, hop on over to my blog.)
Merry Christmas, y’all!
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Okay–to be entered in today’s giveaway, tell us your favorite way to get together with family. Or, if time is tight, say “Pink Pig”!
Remember, you have until Sunday night December 16th to comment on all the posts. One grand prize winner will be chosen from among the gals who post on all 12 days! What the grand prize is will be announced sometime this week (when I figure it out!!!)
My favorite way to get together with family is Christmas Eve after we go to the special service at church and then have dinner at my Mom’s because the focus is on Jesus and family :)
Pink pig!
pink pig
Our family tradition is to always celebrate my mom and dad’s Christmas at noon on Christmas Eve at my house. We have around 50 people that try to get together that day so we always get together at the same time and same place so everyone never has to wonder when it will be.
Pink PIg!!
We don’t have any ‘set in stone’ traditions yet. My husband and I have 2 little ones, my brother- and sister-in-law just welcomed a little one of their own, and my other brother- and sister-in-law have only been married a couple year. So we’ve all been trying to establish our own families and traditions…we’re just happy whenever we all get to see each other, whatever the circumstances!
As a child I loved getting together with all my extended family for breakfast on Christmas morning. I loved being with everyone, especially my cousins. Now, my children all anticipate getting to spend that same time with their cousins that they don’t get to see that often.
The local college has a beautiful luminaria display the first Saturday in December. You can walk through it or drive. They play Christmas music and have free hot chocolate. With 40,000 hand-lit luminarias, it is truly beautiful!
Pink Pig!
My daughter and I love watching White Christmas while we wrap presents. My kids and I love to go and pick out our tree together and buying angel tree gifts. As a family, we enjoy going to Christmas programs at ours and other area churches, and we always read the Christmas story and open presents Christmas morning right before a special breakfast. Then we get to head to grandparents to be with extended family and spend time together playing games and opening gifts.
My favorite family get together at Christmas is when we all gather at Christmas Eve Mass as one large family.
I love getting together for Christmas Eve and making Chinese food together!
Pink pig
I love having everyone meet up in the mountains and go creek fishing! It is a blast and my childhhood memories are full of creek fishing. It has changed a bit since I now have to bait hooks and keep watch on babies :-)
The greatest gift is Jesus
On Christmas Eve, the tradition in our family has been to gather at my parent’s home after the Christmas Eve service at church. We enjoy soup and appetizers and then open presents. My kids look forward to this night because gifts from Grandma and Papa are the BEST!! :)
When we decorate the tree we play christmas music and drink mexican hot chocolate and eat some kind of a treat. this year it was brownies. often it is some kind of christmas cookie.
We use to go to Christmas Eve service, but my children are grown and on their own, so don’t always come home. So when they are all home we have Christmas dinner, play games in the evening and eat pies.
Curling up in our pjs, watching Christmas movies with a fire in the fireplace, a cup of hot chocolate in our laps, and a platter of our homemade Christmas cookies within reach.
We have an annual cookie baking day and we love it!!! We play games and bake and eat pizza, watch football, ride horses.. It’s a great!
Pink Pig
Pink Pig
“Pink Pig”!
Oh my goodness… I grew up in Atlanta and haven’t thought about the pink pig in ages! Thanks for bringing back that fond memory. My boys are 15, 17, and 20. Our traditions are changing as they grow older and new family members join us (my oldest son got engaged this year). The new traditions are wonderful, too!
pink pig