{"id":3598,"date":"2011-12-04T20:48:58","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T20:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/?p=3598"},"modified":"2011-12-04T20:54:22","modified_gmt":"2011-12-04T20:54:22","slug":"a-meaningful-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/a-meaningful-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"A Meaningful Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year a friend of mine from Baylor, Brittney Poe, (who has an absolutely amazing blog<\/a>) had an Advent ornament exchange party for Christmas.\u00a0 You can see her party here<\/a>.\u00a0 Meredith<\/a> and I thought it was a wonderful idea and we wanted to copy her. :)<\/p>\n

Well, Brittney made it very easy, because she did all the work for us!\u00a0 She and her friend wrote and published an Advent devotional called “A Meaningful Christmas!”\u00a0 We were able to purchase their devotional with hostess instructions and have our own party!<\/p>\n

We invited 22 friends (which made our total 24 people) and we each had to make 24 ornaments with a specific item on it.\u00a0 For example, I had to make 24 ornaments with gifts on them.\u00a0 Andria made 24 ornaments with a little donkey on them.\u00a0 Carrie made 24 baby Jesus ornaments, etc…We each made 24, then we swapped.\u00a0 So, we each ended up with 24 different <\/em>ornaments, all following the days of the “A Meaningful Christmas” devotional!<\/p>\n

It was so much fun!\u00a0 If you don’t have a family devotional, do this for your family next year!\u00a0 Our party was not quite as fancy as Brittney’s, because Mere and I are both pregnant and we were just thankful to be standing at the end of the night.\u00a0 We had a great time and it was so much fun to see all the cute, creative ornaments.\u00a0 It’s been so special to share with my kids these ornaments my friends took the time and energy to make, and my kids have been SO excited to open the ornament each night and read the devotional.\u00a0 It has already inspired some great discussions with Preston.<\/p>\n

Our party…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Everyone got their own personalized ornament box.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And we filled them with homemade ornaments.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Our precious Baylor friends, Liana and Nancy, drove in from other little East Texas towns.\u00a0 It was so wonderful to have them!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>At the end of the night, Mere and I enlisted the help of our slaves<\/span> sisters, who are also pregnant.\u00a0 Poor Andria also got stuck helping us clean.\u00a0 I asked her to take this picture.\u00a0 Isn’t this crazy?!?!\u00a0 Ash and I are sisters, Mere and Carrie are sisters.\u00a0 Meredith is pregnant with TWIN BOYS, so we have 5 babies between the 4 of us, all being born within a few weeks of each other.\u00a0 We’re so excited to see all these little maniacs grow up together…just like we did.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Here are a few of the precious ornaments made by my sweet friends.\u00a0 What a treasure for my family!\u00a0 (Some ornaments are already on our advent tree and I’m not going in my kids room while they’re napping.)<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Did I say they were napping?\u00a0 LK just waltzed into my room to let me know she’s not sleepy.\u00a0 Based on the total meltdown she had at Chipotle, I know she IS SLEEPY.\u00a0 Why, Lord?\u00a0 Why does she not sleep?\u00a0 WHYYYYYYY?<\/em><\/p>\n

Sorry for the little tantrum.<\/p>\n

I am about to wrap the ornaments individually, write the assigned number on each, and place them under the Advent tree so they can fight over who gets to<\/span> open a new ornament each night.\u00a0 :)<\/p>\n

I really hope you have the opportunity to try this next year.\u00a0 It’s already been a blessing to our family!<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

I have several family traditions that I want to post.\u00a0 I should have posted them BEFORE December…but I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m a bit of a procrastinator.\u00a0 I’ll work on that later.\u00a0 :)<\/p>\n

Have a lovely Sunday with your maniacs!<\/p>\n

-kate<\/em><\/span><\/h1>\n

.<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year a friend of mine from Baylor, Brittney Poe, (who has an absolutely amazing blog) had an Advent ornament exchange party for Christmas.\u00a0 You can see her party here.\u00a0 Meredith and I thought it was a wonderful idea and we wanted to copy her. :) Well, Brittney made it very easy, because she did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3598"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3623,"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3598\/revisions\/3623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therealhousewife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}