Christmas 2021 - Part 1

 Christmas is my favorite holiday. I wanted to share our Christmas season, even though it may have to be separated into two posts.

We did not get to all of our normal traditions this year. We usually walk around downtown, go to Rock City, see the zoo lights, and take our end of year trip. Time seemed to slip away this Christmas season and before we knew it, we were out of time.

We did make it downtown to our town's boat parade/lighting of the city. 

We usually get our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, this year was no different. We fell in love with our tree and deemed it our best tree yet. I didn't do the best job with lights, but it was still beautiful. My job is to get the lights on. Maddy does most of the decorating. There are a few ornaments that I put on such as the Manny angel ornament. 

Another tradition we have is baking day with Nana. We try to fit in all the Christmas baking we possibly can. Every year we have so many plans, but we always run out of time. Here are our goodies.

Every year we buy one special ornament to add to our collection. This year Maddy chose a Black Widow ornament, and I chose a Gilmore Girls ornament.

Next up is our gingerbread house night. 

We also choose a night to dress up in matching pajama's, Marley included, drink hot chocolate, and drive around looking at Christmas lights. I did take a picture, but I am not a fan of how it turned out. Poor Marley hated his pajamas this year, he felt like he couldn't move. 

Our town's power company puts up a Christmas display in the windows. We make a special trip just to take a look.

As we got closer to Christmas day, it was finally time to make our Santa cookies. 

We finally made it to Christmas Eve. Maddy always gets to open one present, but I pick the present. Every time I seem to pick the present that has Christmas pajamas. This year she got Marvel Christmas pajamas. I took a video instead of pictures, and the video is really dark. Here is what they look like.

Christmas Eve night we go to our church's candlelight service. It is my favorite service. Maddy took this picture. 

Once we got home it was time to get everything ready for Santa.

I think I will end this post here and put Christmas day on another one. Until next time...

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. 

One of the hurdles I faced when trying to stick to a budget is entertainment. My budget is pretty tight, and as I pay off debt, I snowball the minimum payment onto the next debt I am trying to pay off. With prices going up and my paycheck not going up, every dollar is going to necessities and debt. I had to get creative in how we could do fun things for little to no cost. One thing we have found is we enjoy hiking, or at least our version of hiking. I had no idea until I googled trails near me what all our town had to offer. We have been to several new places within our town, and still have more to check out. We tend to only hike in the wintertime because I am terrified of snakes. Below are some of pictures I took on our hikes:

There is nothing better than taking in the view :)

There are a few places we will hike in the summer. This is around Benton Falls.

Another place we love to go is Cades Cove in Pigeon Forge, TN. We have seen several bears there, and usually hike the Abrams Falls trail. 

We like to find trails that have interesting things along the way. 

I highly recommend Raccoon Mountain. It is so beautiful! 

We love to find new places to explore. We are definitely NOT experienced hikers. I often say we are like the Gilmore Girls when it comes to hiking. We might have some of the gear, but we are not real hikers lol. We have gone on enough hikes that we now have proper hiking boots. I purchased our boots through savings. I purchased ones like these

The other thing we like to do for fun is go to our local park. Our park is in a country setting, so it is quite peaceful. We tend to make it to the park more in the summer/fall.

Another low-cost thing we like to do is go for a drive and sing our heart out. Sometimes we will sing in a country accent while other times we will try to sing in a British accent. If you have watched Grey's Anatomy, instead of "dance it out," we sometimes "sing it out." We have dance parties as well, but when we need to get out of the house "sing it out" is much better. 

It is possible to find cheap or free things to do. During Christmas time we love going downtown to see all the Christmas lights. We have something to do for every season. Sometimes it may get a little boring doing the same thing over and over again, but it sure beats sitting at home being bored.

Picture Overload

I am still trying to "catch up" this blog. This post is basically going to be a huge picture dump from September 2013 through December 2013. I don't really have a lot to say, as most of those details are long forgotten :(

September 2013

We used to go to Pigeon Forge in August or September to rent a cabin for the weekend. We were Dollywood season passholders, so that is where we spent our time. My parents were gracious to invite the kids and grandkids up for the weekend. This trip was me and Maddy, my sister and her two kids, and my dad's sister and mom drove up for a day to spend some time with us. We always looked forward to this trip each year. I am not allowed to post pictures of my sister's kids now. I completely understand the reasoning, but I hate not getting to include them. Once they are adults I will hopefully have their permission to post their pictures :)

October 2013

Another tradition we have each year is to visit our local pumpkin patch. We do all the fun slides and swings first, then go on a hayride to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins, then we do the corn maze last.

For Halloween Maddy was Dora. She looks real enthused here doesn't she? lol

November 2013

December 2013

I love our church at Christmas time! 

Santa brought Maddy a big girl bed for this Christmas. She was quickly outgrowing her toddler bed. I love that she said it grew! I know Santa had a lot of little elves to help pull this off because not only did he bring her a bigger mattress, but he hauled off her old one. 

We survived the enormous amount of pictures 😳 whew! I'm having a hard time finding 2014 pictures on my computer, but have a whole album on Facebook. My plan is to go through those to pick and choose the pictures I can remember the details for and write about them. I promise this blog won't be this boring the whole time. My OCD just can't handle jumping in with current events and then going back in and filling in the gaps lol. I for one love all the memories I have, but I know if you don't know me or my family, this might be boring for you...we will get more interesting over time :) I hope you all have a wonderful day <3 p="">