Winner, Santa Sightings and Family Pics

I loved reading all of your Christmas traditions!! I may or may not have gotten a few ideas that we will be happily stealing borrowing from you guys now. ;)

And the winner of the autographed Cool Beans is:

Sarah V!! Send me an email at erynnmangum@gmail.com and I'll ship your book out shortly!

I'll be having another Holly Jolly Giveaway on Friday, so stay tuned for that contest! :)


This was yet another busy weekend! On Saturday, we happened to see a news segment that mentioned a big ceremony to light a 42-foot tall tree here, so we decided to head over there that night and watch.

I feel like this year Nathan is really getting into the idea of Christmas and baby Jesus and Santa. He talks about Christmas almost every day right now. I was telling him about how baby Jesus was born and that's why we celebrate Christmas. Then I said, "Okay, Nathan. Why do we have Christmas?"

He looked at me and said, "Um...um...because Jesus rode a bike."

We're working on it. ;)

The tree lighting was SO FUN. Santa turned the lights on the huge Christmas tree (a relief for Nathan because he was convinced the tree was "bwoken"), there were free goodies and balloon animals and carolers singing. Nathan was sitting on Jon's shoulders for the tree lighting and when Santa first walked out, this is what he did:

I was KILLING myself that I didn't have my good camera with me. He was very insistent that we wait to meet Santa and told me that "Santa need to hold Nathan." So, as soon as we got to the front of the line, he reached right over for Santa to hold him.

Goose. ;) He talked nearly nonstop the whole time Santa was holding him, bless Santa's heart. My baby is not a light one.

Sunday, we had our family pictures taken. Love how they turned out! A huge thanks to my friend Kelsey for taking these! I'm going to save a lot of them for my Christmas card, but here's a couple sneak peeks:

My side of the family :)

My boys. :)

Me and my baby. I cannot believe how old he looks in these pictures!