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:

Whitney Capps!

 

 “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.

We leave there and go ride “The Pink Pig,” an Atlanta holiday staple hosted by Macy’s at one of the major malls.
We then go in the mall to let the kids sit on Santa’s lap. It’s a night my kids (and the hubs and I) anxiously await. But while we love the tradition; it is VERY hard!

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!!!)

436 Comments

  1. It’s playing games together. We play Guesstures and laugh until our faces hurt!! Even my teenage girls join in and relax with us. It’s a blast!! Happy Christmas to all of you and thanks for helping us out:)

  2. Pink pig! We have a traditional Christmas Eve meal. A Norwegian dish called Klub. We all look forward to it every year!! :-)

  3. Our traditional family Christmas which happens when it happens…having a nurse in the family who always works on Christmas …in CA, and we are from NE….I learned that Christmas is when you get together! In fact one year she came at Christmas and I was kind of bummed because we had created our own little traditions and Christmas wasn’t supposed to be until AFTER Christmas…and there are great sales after Christmas, too!

  4. I love our slow and lazy Christmas morning traditions. I make Cinnamon rolls every year for our friends and family and save one pan for us to enjoy on Christmas morning along with a make ahead breakfast casserole. We open gifts, read the Christmas story and often spend most of the day in our PJs, poking around in the kitchen, reading and playing games. It’s usually just my kids, husband and I and we try to just enjoy the day together.

  5. My favorite way to get together with family is for us to go to a Pizza King restaurant, watch a train bring our drinks and feed quarters to the tv. It’s been a family tradition longer than I can remember.

  6. We have two traditions in our family. Hubby and I go out to breakfast Christmas Eve morning together as a couple. Christmas morning my hubby makes homemade biscuits and gravy and the kids (that live in town) come over to eat with us. Later, hubby and I join son and daughter in law at her mom’s house for dinner.

  7. Recently, my husband, son and I have started our own traditions. We used to go to my parents’ home on Christmas Eve for a loud, boisterous, family get together. This has changed due to strained family relationships.

    So…the three of us now enjoy a nice dinner at a local restaurant..an early dinner on Christmas Eve. The one time we don’t look at the prices on the menu. We then go to the early “family” church service. It’s lous and noisy…but it’s filled with the joy and excitement of children. After church, we all open one gift each…our new Christmas pajamas.

    Every year we have read “Twas the Night Before Christmas” before my son goes to bed. Last year he grumbled about the reading of the story..but endured. Now that he’s 13…wonder if I’ll still get that pleasure…

  8. EVER SINCE MY PARENTS DIED (DAD IN APRIL 1994 AND MOM IN FEBRUARY 1995) THE HOLIDAYS HAVE NEVER BEEN THE SAME. NO MORE BIG FAMILY
    GET TOGETHERS FOR THE WHOLE DAY. AS THE SINGLE PARENT OF A SON WITH ASPERGER’S SYNDROME , IT WAS A VERY LONELY TIME. THEN MY SON WENT TO
    THE STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL AND THIS IS THE ELEVENTH YEAR THAT I WILL BE
    SPENDING CHRISTMAS WITHOUT HIM ! I GOT MARRIED 10 YEARS AGO AND
    UNTIL HIS FATHER DIED SEVEN YEARS AGO THE WHOLE FAMILY GOT TOGETHER AT MY MOTHER-IN-LAW’S HOME. OUR HOUSE IS TOO SMALL TO
    HOLD EVERYONE. I REALLY MISS THE BIG FAMILY GET TOGETHERS, BUT MOST
    OF ALL I MISS HAVING MY SON WITH ME.

  9. We all get together on Chritmas, after gifts and dinner we do something different every year, last year we all went phesant hunting, this year will be just games and playing with the grandkids, maybe snowmobiling.

  10. My favorite way to get together with friends & family is at our house on Christmas eve. There was a time the only kids running around were my 2. Now we have anywhere from 6 to 9 kids ranging in age from 2 – 15. It is a wild night in our small house with adults sitting & standing around laughing and catching up and kids running around filled with the excitement of what Santa will bring and celebrating Jesus birth. As loud & crazy as it is I love every minute of it.

  11. We don’t really have any traditions with family since we live in different cities and our plans vary year to year. Maybe when all three are in college coming home for Christmas will be special.

  12. My favorite tradition is Christmas Breakfast (Brunch) It all started with a gift cook book that had a recipe called Make-ahead Christmas Breakfast. At first it included just our family of six, then included the grandparents. Now the four grandparents are no longer with us, but there are 4 in-laws and 11 grands…sometimes they bring a friend. We have a house full and I LOVE it.

    Have a God Filled Day
    Shirley

  13. I love getting together, having a meal at my parents or in-laws and enjoying a good game (especially at my parents with all my siblings) Talk about a LOT of laughs!!! Love it!

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