Christmas Weekend in Atlanta 2016

After spending the night at my mom's on Thursday night, all three of us headed back to Atlanta for a busy Christmas weekend.  Our first "event" of the Christmas weekend was bowling.  None of the granddaughters had ever bowled before.  Aren't they cute in their bowling shoes?  :)

With friends Ellen and Garon and their two kids joining us, we had a total of 8 adults and 6 kids bowling.  GiGi and little Dez (Ellen and Garon's son) were our spectators and co-partakers of some delicious french fries. :)  The guys had one lane, the ladies another, and the kids the last lane.  All the kids did great bowling.

Avery can bowl on one foot!

Emmaline receives instruction from her dad.

I think Bell has bowling down pat!

Hannah does too!

Even Ruby bowled in her sock feet!

When we weren't bowling, we were snacking on french fries...

...or dancing in our fancy bowling shoes to the music.  :)

After bowling and saying good-bye to Ellen, Garon and family, we headed to the Van Wyngardens for dinner, more games, and Christmas gift exchanges with the VWs.  The kids opened their presents first.  They are all becoming professional unwrappers.  :)

Being the Senior Professional Unwrapper, Bell
shows the rest how it's done.  :)

I love the new dresses but where are Hannah and Avery?  

A snow globe from GiGi!

I think you will be able to find these
brightly colored little girls in the snow (or rain).

Ruby is showing her dad how to unwrap a present.

Hannah and Avery with their new dolls!

What about those hats and mittens?  I bet you're wondering if I got all those mittens done.  Well, I completed nine mittens and finished up the last one by Christmas day.  All the little girls loved their new hats and mittens, except Ruby.

Ruby didn't want to wear her hat but she didn't want to take off her mittens!  :)

Now that the gift opening was done, it's time to eat!

The girls played for a little while after supper but then it was time for bed.

After all the little girls were tucked into bed, it was time for the Christmas games to begin.  Our first game was trying to see if we could move an Oreo cookie from our forehead to our mouth without using our hands in under a minute.  (Click HERE if you are unable to open the video.)

One at a time all of us, including GiGi, tried moving an Oreo from our forehead to our mouth without using our hands but only one of us was successful:  Chuck!  We were all laughing so hard it's a wonder we didn't wake up the kids!

The next game Tafanie had lined up for us was the Jingle Bells in a Box game where we tried to guess how many bells were in 5 wrapped boxes and line them up from least to most without opening the boxes.  Once again, Chuck was the winner here!  O.K.  He already beat the guys in bowling.  Surely, there is one game we can beat him in!

The last game was it:  The Breaking Ornaments with Jingle Bells game.  Actually, the object of the game was to see how many ornaments you could knock off the end of the table by sliding 10 jingle bells, one at a time, at the ornaments.  But we ended up breaking up a couple of ornaments too.  (Click HERE if you are unable to open the video below.)

Crystal was the winner of this game knocking all of the ornaments off the table in the shortest amount of time.  After all that game-playing, we finished up the evening with some of GiGi's delicious strawberry cake!  Wow!  What a fun and busy Christmas Eve Eve with our daughters and their families and GiGi!  :)  We gave our hugs and said our good-bye's to the Tafanie, Cory, Bell, Emmaline and Ruby because they were heading out to Iowa on Christmas Day to be with Cory's family.

Christmas Eve was a little more relaxed.  Grant cooked his delicious sausage ring for brunch at the Robinsons and I made chocolate gravy.  We spent Christmas Eve playing with Avery and Hannah.

Avery trying on her mom's shoes.  

Chuck, Hannah and Avery did a Skittles experiment that he had scene on Facebook.  (Click HERE if you are unable to open the below really cool video.)

The big kid, Chuck, has been wanting to try this with the girls ever since he saw it on Facebook but I think all of us kids thought it was pretty cool.

After going to the Christmas Eve services at their church, we came back for a delicious Christmas Eve dinner that Grant had prepared.  It tasted as good (if not better) than it looked.

After dinner and baths, it was time for two little girls to go to bed!

On Christmas morning, the girls got to see what was in their stockings...

....before we all went to Waffle House for breakfast.  The Busbys were there again in their green Christmas PJ's...

...and the Robinsons were there decked out in their red and white striped PJs.

After a delicious Waffle House breakfast that was treated by some nice green elves (thank you, Busbys!),

we headed back to Grant and Crystal's where the girls opened their Christmas gifts.

Hannah loves her snowglobe from GiGi!
All 5 granddaughters got beautiful snowglobes!

Those girls love their books!

The Master Unwrappers!

Avery loves her new umbrella!

A keyboard mat!

MiMa had to try this out!  

Hannah trying out her button art game.

Avery in her Princess Alena costume.

By the time all the presents were opened, it was time to go to church.  After church, we came back to Robinsons for a few minutes before Chuck, GiGi and I headed back north to take GiGi back home to Nashville.  The traffic was not bad at all, and after saying our good-byes to my mom (GiGi), we turned around and headed back to Atlanta.  The traffic was a little heavier but still not that bad but we learned a very important lesson on the way back.  Most restaurants are closed on Christmas night so don't count on being able to stop and get something to eat.  The only restaurants that were open were a few McDonalds and Waffle House, of course.  All the McDonalds restaurants had very long lines both inside and out and we didn't really want Waffle House again since we just had it that morning.  I had packed some snacks so that held us over until we got back to the motorhome at Stone Mountain.

On Monday morning, we got everything ready for heading out on Tuesday and then headed over to the Robinsons to spend the rest of our last day in Atlanta with them.  Crystal and I played two new games the girls had received for Christmas with them:  Uno and Connect Four.  And while Hannah was down for a nap, Avery showed me some of her dance moves on the keyboard mat.  :)  Click HERE if you are unable to open the video.

 Pa also got in a much deserved nap after all that driving from the day before.

We had a delicious leftover Christmas dinner for dinner.  It was as good as it was on Christmas!  After we had given Avery and Hannah good night and good-bye kisses and hugs, they went to bed.  Then, Crystal, Grant, Chuck and I played a couple of games of SkipBo.  We said our good-byes to Crystal and Grant and then headed back to the motorhome to get a good night's rest before heading on to San Antonio.

All those granddaughters keep you busy but they and all of our family are so very precious to us.  Getting to be with all of them is the best Christmas present of all!   

  

The Days Before Christmas in Atlanta 2016

We spent our first couple of days in Stone Mountain resting and trying to get over our colds or whatever it is that we had. With Chuck's foot still on the mend, we didn't go on our normal morning golf ball hunts either.  The below picture of Stone Mountain was taken at dusk.  Chuck was trying to get a picture of the Christmas tree of lights they put up at the top of the Stone Mountain every year but the lights blended into the sunlight.  I thought the trees looked pretty cool though.

I also finished crocheting these hats for our granddaughters and then got started on some mittens.  Hmmm.  Five pair of mittens before Christmas and only 12 days to Christmas.  I guess that means I need to make at least one mitten a day.

We went over to Crystal and Grant's on Tuesday night (Dec 13) for dinner.  How do you like our little shepherdess granddaughters?

And their big black sheep!

On Thursday night, we went to Bell's Christmas program at her school.  The kindergarten class sung a melody of nursery rhymes and "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas."  The songs performed by all the classes were very good and the school had a nice reception after the program.

On Saturday night, Crystal and Grant had received some tickets to an Atlanta Hawks game from a friend and surprised us by taking us to the game.  I had never been to a pro basketball game and Chuck had only been to one.

The halftime show had some guys doing all kinds of dunking tricks which was pretty cool. (Click HERE if you cannot open below video.)

It was a pretty close game but unfortunately the Hawks lost.  We had a lot of fun though and really enjoyed the game.

On Monday before Christmas, we babysat Ruby while Tafanie took Bell and Emmaline to a children's play.  We had lots of fun playing with Ruby,

giving her a little bit of a candy cane,

and reading books together.  Ruby loves books!  (Click HERE if you cannot open below video.)

On Tuesday, we went to Emmaline's pre-school for her Christmas program.

As you can tell by her smile, Emmaline loves to sing!  So do all the other children!  (Click HERE if you cannot open below video.)

On my birthday, Wednesday morning, I received a precious birthday greeting from Hannah.  (Click HERE if you cannot open video.)

While Tafanie was helping out at Bell's school with their Christmas party, we babysat Emmaline and Ruby.  Pa, Emmaline and Ruby took a nap together.  Or rather, I should say they pretended to take a nap together.  :)

And then, on Wednesday night, we celebrated my birthday a little bit more by enjoying dinner with the Van Wyngardens and watching my favorite movie:  It's a Wonderful Life.

Emmaline, who also has a December birthday, had a birthday party on Thursday.  Early Thursday morning, I met Crystal and Avery for breakfast at Waffle House and then I brought Avery back to the motorhome.  First, Avery colored with some of Pa & MiMa's new crayons...

...and then she helped Pa with his foot exercises by holding back on the tension band.  :)

We went over to the VW's house Thursday morning, to help Tafanie with the decorations and getting ready for Emmaline's party.  By the time of the party, the house was decorated with lots of snowmen...

and so were Emmaline, Ruby and Bell.

Emmaline got one of her birthday presents before the party:  a new bike!

Emmaline's birthday party began with coloring snowmen and getting your picture taken like a snowman.

Avery the Snowgirl

Tafanie (the master gamer) also had a couple of cute games for them to play:  Musical Snowflakes --

(Click HERE if you are unable to open below video.)

...and Pin the Nose on the Snowman.

(Click HERE if you are unable to open the below video.)

After all the games and activities, the kids enjoyed pizza rolls and cookies and fresh melted snowman water.  :)  They also made snowmen out of marshmallows and pretzels.

The party ended with all the kids watching Emmaline's favorite movie:  Frosty the Snowman.  

I think Emmaline and all the kids who came had a very fun snowman party!  After the party, Chuck and I headed for Nashville to pick up my mom so we could all celebrate the Christmas weekend together.