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. On Christmas Eve, a very special family gives a wonderful gift to us every year. It is something we all look forward too. A very talented family goes caroling each year at our home. It is such a blessing that everything we are doing just stops and we listen to the beautiful voices and the quiet of the moment. They are such a blessing.

  2. Movie night with my son. Curling up under the blankets and watching one our many favorite Christmas movies and just relaxing and enjoying time together!

  3. We like to let God know we are thankful. All of my family get together the day after Thanksgiving celebrating (Prayer,singing and testimonies are given) all that we have to be grateful for looking forward to Christmas.

  4. I love when I can have every one over to my house. I have slowly let the control go over the years, not everything has to be perfect, but if everyone is there, full and happy, I’m happy. :)

  5. One of my favorite ways to get together with family was when my parents were still married. We would all go to church together on Christmas Eve, then go home and have Lutefisk..

  6. I love, love the big Christmas breakfast we have every year and all the family always meets up over at my in-law’s for this mega delicious meal. We then sit around talking, laughing and just enjoying the day with each other.

  7. At the farm. Enjoying simple food, simple times filled with lots of love and laughter in the midst of God’s beautiful creation.

  8. Our family is scattered about. We try to have an early Christmas dinner together usually about two weeks before Christmas. We will all gather in Lake Havasu to enjoy lots of food, songs, and Yankee Christmas gift swaps. It is so fun getting to spend time with my family even though we can get a tad silly.

  9. Some of our favorite traditions are to have picnic dinners in the family room and watch Rudolph, Frosty and The Grinch. We also have one Saturday where every child (I have 4…5 including hubby) pick their favorite cookie to bake for the season and we bake up a storm. We are also blessed that on Christmas eve (after we celebrate a birthday of my daughter) we enjoy looking at all the lights in our town and having a gathering with many friends. May you be blessed this year in whatever you do as a family!

  10. Gathering in the back room with my sisters (and now our husbands and kids) waiting for Santa to arrive (seems we rarely do Christmas on Christmas morning).

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