Our Christmas 2011

Christmas is always great but the past couple of years it has been the greatest!  I have gotten to watch it through my child's eyes and I'll just admit that I didn't know Christmas could be more magical than it already was but watching Ivy's face through out the season made my heart swell.

Ivy really got into decorating the tree this year.  She loved it last year too but she put all the ornaments in one spot....which was adorable and I left them exactly where she put them.  But this year she was very particular when she placed ornaments on the tree.  Even the ornaments that I put on the tree were approved by Ivy before they ever touched a branch.  And everyday when we would get home Ivy would go stand in front of the Christmas tree and rearrange ornaments to her liking until I would make her come to the dinner table.

Visiting Santa this year was a real treat.  Ivy ran right up to him and jumped in his lap and told him that she had been a good girl.  We waited forever to see Santa but it was totally worth it to see her have a conversation with him like she was just hanging out with one of her friends.

We spent Christmas Eve on the farm again.  Dad cooked us low country boil that was delicious!  Most of the day we just sat around on Dad's deck relaxing and talking.  Chris was out in the main field knocking around some old golf balls for a while with Ivy following him around.  And I got to spend some much needed time with my Mama Hancock just talking.

Just before dinner Ivy decided she wanted to take a walk so we headed down the road.  Chris eventually caught up with us to take a few pictures and they will go down as some of my favorite ever taken of us.  It's really cool to see Ivy play in the same dirt and fields that I did as a kid.

I wanted to start a new baking tradition with Ivy this year because it's hard to make a red velvet cake with a 4 year old. So I got a recipe from my Aunt Betsy for her Candy Cane cookies. They don't taste like candy canes or peppermint, they are just simple vanilla and almond flavored cookies twisted together to look like a candy cane. They are one of my favorite desserts that she always brings to my Mama Hancock's house on Christmas day. I normally eat at least 25 by myself.

They were pretty simple to make but when it came time to twist them together things didn't go so well. In fact we had to improvise and do other things with the cookie dough after I attempted to twist about four together so that I didn't start throwing things and saying bad words in front of Ivy. I basically let Ivy tell me what shape to make or what to put on top of the cookie...they still tasted delicious even if they weren't as pretty as Aunt Betsy's.

Ivy picked out a few that she knew would be Santa's favorites.  Ivy also decided that Santa didn't want any milk with his cookies because apparently he likes water to drink.

Now most kids jump up out of the bed and run screaming to the Christmas tree when they wake up to see what Santa brought.....but Ivy is a bit like me and she will choose sleeping over getting a present any day of the week. (We like our sleep, what can I say) But when we finally got her to wake up she was very excited to see if she got anything off her wishlist!

She was also super excited that Santa and her elf Hermie left her a note with just a few cookie crumbs left on the plate.

One of Ivy's favorite gifts was the Bjork t-shirt that I got her.

We don't have any other pictures from the rest of the day unfortunatly. We took the camera to my mother-in-law's house and to my Mom's house but we just got wrapped up in visiting with everyone that it didn't make it out of the bag. It makes me a little bit sad but sometimes it's nice just to have the memory snapshots too.

We hope you had a very Merry Christmas!