Laugh. Love. Learn.

Mmm soup. Chicken and wild rice. Tanner loved it.

In fact, she loved it so much (after 3 servings) that she licked the bowl.

Then she wore the bowl as a hat.

She’s “so big!”

:)

Never a dull moment!

Alright, blog readers.
It’s almost January.
It’s supposed to be cold. (I mean, it’s not, but we can pretend.)
Cold means one thing: Soup.
Since there’s no Panera in B-town, I guess I’ll have to make my own.
Do you have any recipes to share?

Three of my favorite soups can be found here.
May the soup fest begin.

there are 8 couches / chairs in this house.
why do we all sit on the same loveseat?

my kids are awesome. i love being home, and wish winter break would never end. i’ll cry when we have to go back. however, today…. i was really thankful for tanner’s teachers. and for public school. and really in awe of supermoms i know.
eight-year-olds are silly. all the time. and they never get tired.

eighteen-month-olds climb on things. all day long. and jump on furniture. and stand on tables. and steal electronic devices and run off with them.

but they sure are sweet after baths.

i need a nap.

Out of all the fun things T got for Christmas, she seems to like the Elmo bibs the best… However, to her, they’re not bibs…they’re capes. She’s worn these pretty much around the clock since Santa came. “elmohh! elmohh! elmohh!” Crazy kid.

This morning started with Katelynn waking us up at 5:55am. She said, “Mom, I know we have to wait til 6, but it’s almost 6!!!” Woohoo
Santa hooked her up with a Wii!

Uncle Matt did a great job selecting Pippi Longstocking books,

And Santa found matching converse for Katelynn and Tanner!

Santa brought Tanner her very own slide!!!

She was exceptionally excited about the ziploc bag of Cheerios he put in her stocking. “ohs! ohs! ohs!”

The Elmo book with an attached puppet was also a big hit!

Matthew enjoyed his Happy Hanukah gift card and said, “Shalom!”
He loves when his nieces wake him up at 5:55am…AND when they scare him when he’s listening to his iPod at 12:45am because they thought they heard Santa land on the roof. (HaHa!)

Mr. & Mrs. Claus enjoyed watching everyone open their insane amount of rockstar gifts (Thanks, Mom & Dad!) and mom made breakfast!

Tanner says, “All gone!” No more presents.

Fun times.

Christmas Eve was amazing. We had two services in the Elan Ballroom at Chateau Elan, and everything was gorgeous. This year we had help from the guys at DCR Media, and their expertise + our learning via school of hard knocks led to a super-organized, minimally-stressful, totally rockstar service. We pulled off our most technically-complicated adventure yet, and it makes me really excited when thinking about the future of theVine!
Nick’s stars looked amazing, especially when coupled with all the LED lighting…

Here was my view for the evening. I think the most exciting part of the night for me was watching our team do such an amazing job! It’s so cool to see people find the sweet-spot of their talents, and two of our people were in new positions…clearly positions they were made for! Morgan Collins OWNED calling all the camera shots, even though we only gave her one preview monitor. Homegirl earned herself a future seat at the video console in our imaginary video control room. Robbie Pancake had been holding out on us with his phenomenal camera skills, and he got crazy-awesome shots all night! In addition to providing quality entertainment on the tech comm system, Nick & James held down the wide shots, and Mr. Kris Jones (a.k.a. MacDaddyPro) handled ProPresenter like a champ. Also, we couldn’t have done what we did without the 20-or-so volunteers who assisted with set-up and tear-down…it went smoother and faster than ever before, thanks to their dedication! (and muscles.) I still can’t believe I get to be a part of this team…it’s surreal. And in Braselton. Haha. Braselton?!? Who would have thought…

Tanner enjoyed getting all dressed-up and coming to Christmas Eve with LaLa and PaPa, and she was especially excited about eating grapes from the snack area!!! That was the highlight of the night for her.

And finally, this was just too cool not to take a picture of … it’s in the atrium at Chateau Elan — they put millions of REAL cranberries in their fountain!!! It was sooo awesome. And creative. Major cool points.

The music was great, the message was great, nobody caught anything on fire, nothing glass got broken, the Macs behaved, and only one person got gaff taped.
I can’t wait for 2009 at theVine!

For our second Christmas Adventure we headed to Fun-roe, with Shane’s platters in hand. (We’re doing low-maintenance Christmas this year, in case you were wondering. I’d rather enjoy the people than enjoy washing their dishes.)
Katelynn’s always excited about presents!

And she should have been — she got enough Vera Bradley stuff to open a boutique.

Tanner got some very cool stuff, including this fun new phone,

But what she really enjoyed was climbing on boxes and furniture. Go figure.

She got a very cool gift that requires assembly, so whenever daddy puts it together a video blog will follow…
Thanks, MooMoo and PawPaw!!!

We celebrated Christmas with Nick’s mom’s side of the family tonight. It was fun, and great Zaxby’s was had by all.

Tanner couldn’t believe she got an Abby Cadabby! She was so excited, and cute.

She couldn’t stop smiling…

and hugging…

Katelynn had fun being silly,

holding this 4-pound dog,

and playing photographer.

This was the funniest part of the evening: Tanner met a fish.
She was so excited to tell it what the fish “says!”

kissing the fish…

and luring the fish to come to her side of the bowl (by using her rockstar fish-talking skills.)

:) Hilarious.

teeny tiny cookies for teeny tiny babies…
(as compared to a mini-reese’s cup, ‘cause i couldn’t find a quarter. there are 88 cookies on that tray; they’re about quarter-sized.)

so pretty. then i made big stars for the babies’ grown-ups!
(and my new personal favorite: the star with the star cut-out.)