The Christmas Card

One of my favorite things to do each Christmas is to mail out holiday cards to our friends and family. This is one of the treasured ways we can stay in touch with friends and family that are so dear to us. For this reason, I love it. On the other hand though, it is a tradition that takes a great deal of patience to complete. This is why our Christmas card will always arrive the week of Christmas. I spend the entire month of December working up the energy to complete the task. Needless to say, getting a picture when they are all looking and smiling at the camera at the same time is an extreme challenge. I thought I would share some of the "bloopers" from our little photo session in front of the Christmas tree.

After much laughter (and some groaning), we did finally find a picture where they are all three looking at the camera. It was a proud moment! Now when our card arrives in your mailbox, you will know the real back story on that perfectly posed picture.

Thankfulness

I just couldn't resist sharing this picture taken on Aaron's birthday...

I am so thankful for my husband. On Tuesday, we celebrated our 8th anniversary and his birthday was the following day. I was actually sick most of this week and was reminded, yet again, that I have an awesome husband. God gave me the greatest blessing in Aaron. He is so loving, kind and caring towards me when I am not feeling my best. You would think that considering all the health issues I have struggled with this past year, he would not be quite so understanding, but he is amazing. He is my rock and I can honestly say that I love him more today than the day we married 8 years ago. God has really grown us both up together in Him and I can't wait to see where we go from here. We have already learned so much about love, compassion and grace in our marriage and I have no doubt that God has so much more to show us. All I know is that I couldn't have asked for a better partner for the journey ahead.

Let It Snow!

Last Thursday night we had a great surprise here...SNOW! Aaron was on call at the hospital but Lauren, Jake, Gracie and I enjoyed every minute of it. Lauren and Jake couldn't wait to get out there and start playing. Gracie and I watched from indoors and I would hold my camera out the door just long enough to get a quick picture. It was bitterly cold for this southern girl! The kids had a little snow to play with Friday morning with Aaron but the biggest opportunity for snowman building was Thursday night. Here are a few pictures of our winter wonderland...

Lauren is head snowman

builder!

I loved how it covered
the branches!

In celebration of Lauren's school being cancelled on Friday,

we ended the evening with some hot chocolate and made

some brownies for Daddy. It certainly feels like

Christmas!

'Tis the Season to be Busy!

I am one of those people who looks forward to Christmas all year long. I absolutely love the holidays. I love to decorate the house with Christmas decorations, watch my favorite Christmas movies, sing carols, drink hot apple cider on the couch with only the lights of the Christmas tree glowing, bake goodies, and of course, I love all that SHOPPING! We all know it wouldn't be Christmas if we weren't rushing around, over-scheduled and crazed. So the Millage family got off to a good start this week. With so many things going on and not a lot of extra time to blog, I thought I'd just combine several events into one super blog!


Deck the Halls!

Aaron and Jake picked out a beautiful Christmas tree and we all had a great time decorating the house for the holidays. Lauren is just like her Mommy and loves this tradition the best!

Gracie loves looking at the glowing tree! Thankfully, she hasn't been too interested in taking off the ornaments.

This is one of my favorite decorations in the whole house. It is a tree decorated with ornaments made by Lauren and Jake over the years. It won't be long before Gracie begins adding her handmade ornaments also.

Another favorite of mine is the garland. I think part of my nostalgia for Christmas garland comes from my own childhood. It was my favorite decoration that Dad would put up each year. I used to hate when the holidays ended and it had to come down. The stairs suddenly seemed so bare. Lauren loves to hang the stockings. She chooses a stocking holder for each family member and then delicately hangs each stocking. Gracie just had a a great time with all the new sights in the house. She laughed and smiled. It was precious. I can have had the hardest day, be absolutely exhausted and that smile of hers can light up the room and change my whole mood.

Saturday we celebrated Lauren's 7th birthday with her friends. Her birthday is still a couple of weeks away but I always try to have her party the first weekend in December, before all of the hectic schedules really get underway. We had a great time this year. She had her party at Wizard Animation Studios. I had never heard of this before and am so glad that I found this place. It was an amazing party. Each child could "star" in their own movie. They could pick the theme and then would go into a recording booth, with blue screens surrounding them. The "director" would give them short lines to repeat and simple actions. They were dressed in costume, which was adorable. There was usually three children per movie. We had a large group and so five movies were made. At the end of the party, each child took home a copy of their movie. All of the girls chose the Alice in Wonderland themed movie and my nephews, Ryan and Ben, chose a dinosaur movie. While a group was filming the movie, everyone else was in the party room where each of the 4 walls had a large movie screen and they could play Mario Kart Wii, other video games, sing Karaoke, etc. It was a big hit and we all had a great time. Here is the movie that Lauren made. It is so funny!

I loved having both of my parents and my sister Karen and her two boys, Ryan and Ben in from Atlanta. Lauren loved having them at her party. It was a fun day!





And last but not least...We were so proud of Lauren on Sunday evening. The children's ministry at our church put on "The Mystery of the Manger" and it was so cute. They all did a great job but of course, my eyes (and camera) was glued on our baby girl. She worked so hard learning all of her music months ahead of time. We spent a lot of time listening to her CD in the car and so we ALL knew the music by the time this program came around. Lauren knew all of the motions and my heart was just melting the whole time.

Aaron and I were so proud of her and I can't even describe the feeling that it gave me to watch our daughter sing about the love of Jesus. That really is what the Christmas season is all about. At Christmas, we all do so much rushing around. We go to different parties, or we run from store to store finding that perfect gift or the latest toy, and it is too easy to forget why we celebrate this time of year. Aaron and I don't ever want to be so busy that we forget to teach our children the true reason for the season.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life," John 3:16 NIV

Thanksgiving Day Video

Here is some video taken on Thanksgiving Day. We were in Birmingham visiting Aaron's mom, Sam, and Dan. We had a great time and Lauren, Jake and Gracie enjoyed some special time with Grandma and Paw-Paw. Sam had a cake for Gracie and to our amazement, Gracie didn't like birthday cake. She didn't like the one we tried to give her at her birthday party on Saturday either. I'm sure that will change in a few years! It was a really nice visit and I pieced together a few clips from our day together.

Thanksgiving

Whew! It has been a whirlwind of a week! As if Thanksgiving isn't busy enough, we decided to add about 940 miles of car travel to the mix! Yes, we are absolutely crazy but it was still a great week. Even with the 24-hour stomach bug that Lauren had, the antibiotics that Aaron, Gracie and I were all on throughout the week, and the 7 1/2 hours it took us to drive home on Sunday with all the traffic, we still managed to have an enjoyable holiday with our families. Lauren was out of school for the entire week, so we began the week in Duluth, Georgia with my family. Last Monday, Aaron had an interview at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, GA, which is just 30 minutes north of Duluth/Lawrenceville, where my parents and sister live. We are in the midst of Aaron interviewing in multiple places for a neonatologist job, which would begin when his fellowship ends in June. Gainesville was his first interview and it went very well. Over the next two months, he has interviews at hospitals in Savannah, Montgomery and two in Atlanta. We are anxious to see where God leads us in this process. It has been a long road and it is amazing to us both that we are finally at the end. We are ready to settle down somewhere and root our family in a community where we will all be happy. It is a difficult decision and one that we are definitely not prepared to make alone. We are spending a great amount of time in prayer over this and know that God will continue to be faithful in His leading of our family. I will give updates on this as we have them. We welcome your prayers!

After spending a couple of days in Atlanta, we left for Birmingham and spent time with some of Aaron's family also. There was just an intimate gathering of 22 people! It was a great time though and aside from a delicious turkey dinner, I had my first golf lesson! That was quite humorous, to say the least! Let's just say I don't think Aaron is anxious to go golfing with me any time soon.

The third and final leg of our Thanksgiving week was spent back in Atlanta, celebrating Gracie's first birthday with my family. I can't believe our little baby is 1-yr old!! She is absolute pure joy for us all and I am so thankful for the past year with her. She's our angel. What a great day it was to have her celebrate with all of her cousins. She had no idea what was going on, but she knew we were all really excited about something! After we sang "Happy Birthday," she just clapped her little hands together and smiled. It was another great milestone for our family.

It was great to be surrounded by the love of our families. It made all of the hectic aspects of traveling with three young children completely worth it. Below are several pictures taken over this past week...

I thought I should probably tell you about this one...you know this must be a great cup of cocoa if I actually take a picture of it! My Dad made this for me before bed on my last night there. I had just gotten all three kids down for the night, and I was completely exhausted and came downstairs to see this waiting for me. My dad made fresh cocoa with freshly whipped cream. Yum!!