Yesterday we decided to head to Atlanta to go to Fernbank Museum with the kids and my parents. The special exhibit was all about Antarctica and the IMAX film was excellent! We really had a fun day exploring there. Of course, the great ending to the day was stopping at Starbucks for their great hot chocolate... YUM!This is the video we took of Mitchell and Amelia discovering what Santa had brought them. Amelia is pretty excited about her Northface coat, and Mitchell is slightly confused about the ping pong table that Santa left for him... I wonder why? We thought that you would enjoy seeing their reactions!
What a wonderful Christmas day!! Mitchell and Amelia woke up at about 7:30 and were ready to see what Santa brought them! I think that they were happy with everything! Following our family tradition, after seeing what Santa brought all of us we ate a yummy breakfast of eggs, bacon and monkey bread. Then we all get dressed and gather around the Christmas tree with some Christmas music playing and open all of the presents. We all got a lot of really nice gifts from family and from each other... we can't wait to use/wear/spend all of them! The rest of the day was spent relaxing, playing ping pong, and cooking dinner. My parents came over later in the afternoon for dinner. We just finally got our dining room put together, so we got to use it for the first time... I was so excited! Amelia had even made place cards for everyone with a different picture on each one. The day was special because we had great quality time together. As Amelia said today "we didn't even leave the house yesterday!". In my opinion, that is a wonderful day! 
This past Sunday night Amelia had her recital for the voice lessons that she has been taking since September. It was a small recital with just six girls singing a song that they had been working on and they had a reception after the show with all of the girl's favorite treats served. All of the girls did a great job singing! Of course we were all very proud of Amelia being able to get up in front of everyone and sing like that! We had a slight problem with video during Amelia's performance so we convinced her to sing again for us at home so we could save the wonderful memory! The only difference here is that she didn't have the music to sing to, but she did a great job even without the music! Enjoy!
We have had a really fun Christmas season so far, especially spending time with our families! Two weekends ago we traveled to North Carolina to visit my sister, Debbie, and her family. We had a nice relaxing weekend there with lots of good food and treats, jigsaw puzzle solving, opening presents, and catching a basketball game of Brandon's Saturday morning. I think that their dog Yogi enjoyed all of the attention, especially from Amelia! On Sunday morning we headed over to Dave's parents place for a nice long visit with them. We let Gramps and Gran Ann open their presents from us while we were there and also got to open ours! We ended our NC visit with a great lunch with Dave's brother, Jerry, and his family and Dave's daddy. Then we hit the road to get Mitchell back to Athens for his youth group Christmas party that night. What a fun weekend!
