This blog spot is primarily a photo/memory album for our family. It also serves as a way for us to share what is going on in our lives with our friends and family that don't see us on a regular basis. Ashley, Worth, Ellie, Emma, and Mack
Christmas came and Christmas went! It went by so fast I feel like we need a do over. We started off our celebration in Tifton at the Bowers house. Unfortunately, the Berryman's were unable to attend because Jay tested positive for COVID. Being down 3 grandchildren made Mia and Dubs' house slightly quieter than it normally is for Christmas.
Christmas Eve we spent the afternoon on the golf course as a family. The weather was gorgeous and you couldn't have asked for a better time to all be together. After golf, we headed to church, then the Waffle House for our annual Christmas Eve dinner, and then finally we rode around and looked at some pretty amazing Christmas lights. Once we were home, Mack and Emma were able to distribute their reindeer food in the front yard before Ellie sat down to read them "The Night Before Christmas." The reading of this used to be my job, but I got the boot this year.
Christmas Day brought a lot of joy and rest. We opened gifts after examining what Santa brought, and we had a wonderful brunch with Grandma and Papa. The day was very relaxing with nothing really going on but Christmas movie watching and toy playing.
Opening gifts was a slight few levels quieter without the Berrymans there.
Mia wins favorite gift for Ellie. A picture of Leonard dressed as a Harry Potter wizard.
E.W. scored with UGA neck pillows for this crew!
No caption needed
The Cousin Crew was missing a few, but we got 1/2 of them in a picture on Mia's couch.
Christmas Eve golf for the Bowers. Worth and Ellie were a team.
Emma and Mack were a team. Emma is getting better and better every time she plays.
Mack was glad to get back on the golf course. He misses the weekly clinics because of guitar lessons.
It was a tie!
Candlelight Christmas Eve service at PAUMC
Mack and Emma successfully covered the yard in Reindeer food for Santa's Reindeer.
Ellie reading "The Night Before Christmas"
Mack wanted Santa to feel welcome, so he made him a sign and hung it on the mantel.
Santa made it!
Santa was generous enough to give Mack his own iPad, so maybe now I can have mine back.
More Legos for Emma!
Mack got a new baseball bat which he definitely needed.
Ellie and Emma got a BIG surprise this year! Sorry this video will not center on the page.
My favorite part of gift opening is opening up what the kids bought for us at their candy cane store at school. They really put so much thought into it, and I love every minute of it!
Ellie enjoying a "Daddybucks" instead of Starbucks. (This is Worth's name for it, obviously.)
Grandma and Papa came bearing gifts!
Everyone needs a whoopee cushion pool float!
Both Grandmothers hit the jackpot with Ellie this year.
Papa opening his gift from Emma.
They tackled a 1000 piece puzzle this Christmas. It took the entire month...
We are getting closer and closer to Christmas! We've been busy catching up with all of the performances we missed out on last year. It has been very busy but so much fun to watch these kiddos perform. Ellie had her school chorus Christmas concert, Emma and Mack had their K-kids Choir Christmas show, and Mack had a guitar recital this weekend. In the middle of all that, we squeezed in a small celebration for Worth's 42nd birthday. There are several videos on this post because the pictures just didn't do it justice!
I've got 3 very excited little people in my house now that school is out and the Christmas countdown has begun!
Ellie's 7th grade class for the Christmas chorus concert. I had a seat WAY in the back, so my pictures aren't great.
This video is terrible, but it is part of one of the cute songs they sang. It's from the Broadway musical, Elf:
Ellie had a solo part that was so cute!
Ellie's solo was short, but so funny! She even got a "Felix" award for it:
I was unable to get great pictures at the K-Kids concert. you can make out Emma on the back row in green in this picture and Mack was just behind the piano, so we never could see him.
The songs were beautiful though and the kids did so well!
Emma even got to sing with 3 other girls this year. They sang "Silent Night" in German:
These 2 did a great job!
Elie's chorus had a 2nd performance at the Hahira Train Depot for the lighting of the Hahira City Christmas tree. It was cold and rainy, but they put on a great show!
We ended the Train Depot night with a Waffle House dinner and cookie cake to celebrate Worth's 42nd birthday a day late. (He was on call the day before on his actual birthday)
Emma and Mack got to go visit Santa last weekend. Ellie was still sleeping and preferred not to be woken up for this event. Mack refused to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas, so Santa told him to make sure he wrote it in a letter for him.
Doughnuts, cookies, and making reindeer food after seeing Santa.
This Saturday Mack we had another Christmas performance. This time, it was Mack's guitar recital. He did so good!
Mack had a solo performance in which he played "Evergreen Forest" with his teacher accompanying him. His class performed "Jingle Bells" as a group.
This is actually both of the guitar groups. His class is only about 1/2 of these kids.
The grandparents made an appearance to cheer on our guitarist.
I think even Ellie and Emma were proud of their little brother.
This was Mack and Emma cuddling on the couch this morning. We were lazy and watched church via livestream. It was too cute not to get a photo.
We bribed Ellie with coffee to get her to wake up and come watch with us.
I tried to make an October post and the one afternoon I had a couple of hours to work on it, either my computer or Blogger were being VERY slow downloading the pictures for me to post. I tried again in November, and the same thing happened when I added pictures. Here I am at the beginning of December and I'm trying again. It will be a picture overload for sure. We've celebrated Halloween, been to UGA games, gone to golf tournaments, had a big family Thanksgiving, had the Nutcracker ballet performance and so much more! These are are some pictures of our last 2+ months. The remainder of December pictures I will attempt to post after Christmas.
I didn't get a ton of great pictures of Mack playing football. He did great playing defense this year and even made an interception! His team won out again this year and I think they are definitely ready to play in pads next year.
Mack's wild and crazy football team
We got to go to a UGA game with the Berrymans and as always, it was wild and fun.
These cousins love cheering on the Dawgs together.
The 2 big boys
Emma played in a VCC golf league this fall and she had so much fun and did great even if some of the tournaments (like this one) she was the only girl playing.
When I take the girls to get their haircuts, their sweet hairstylist always asks if they want her to fix their hair pretty. Emma always says yes, and it looks so good!
Emma loved this and at one point recently I offered to try it on her and she refused. She had no confidence in me recreating this masterpiece.
Leonard now spends a little time outside in the mornings. One morning, I came back from dropping everyone off at school and he was standing at the door soaking wet. Poor thing had somehow fallen in the pool. Thank goodness he was able to get himself out! He came running in and would not let me dry him off. He went straight to Ellie's room and hid/slept under her bed for the rest of the afternoon.
End of the season football party was a hit!
Mack and ANOTHER trophy for a winning football team. We will see how basketball goes this year.
We love "booing" our neighbors. Unfortunately, this year no one booed us. The kids were kind of bummed about that, but we didn't let it stop us from dropping prizes off at other peoples houses though!
The pumpkin patch is a very different experience with older kids in so many ways. However, the pictures and fighting during pictures will never change.
These 3 are ALOT taller than our first visit to our church's pumpkin patch.
My sweet 5th grade Sunday school class was decked out and ready for morning trick or treating!
We always almost miss carving a pumpkin because the fall ends up being so busy. Last year, I waited a little too late and there were NO pumpkins anywhere. The girls got outside just before Halloween and got ours carved though. Mack wouldn't help, the inside of the pumpkin freaked him out.
I thought this picture was so funny of Mack and our 2 neighbors playing football in the front yard.
Halloween was a blast this year. The Bowers were all characters from Harry Potter since that is the newest obsession for all 3 Bowers kids.
Even Worth and I dressed up. Worth was Voldemort and I was Professor McGonagal.
Best family picture for the year.
Even though they are getting older, they still love the trick or treating tradition in our neighborhood and I love taking pictures of them frantically running to and from houses.
We got to go to another very cold UGA game.
I ended up getting to hang out with some college friends and their kids. It was so much fun!
Mack had about a week of deciding he was going into the newspaper business. This was his first publication with our family updates.
Because we are apparently now (for the time being) a golf family, we went to a golf tournament at St. Simons Island. The RSM Classic was cold and windy but a great tournament to watch, especially for the kids. We decided to make plans to try to go every year.
You could really get pretty close to the golfers at this tournament.
"Ms. Alanna," the kids' old babysitter that went off and left us for PT school, was home for Thanksgiving break and asked if she could help me with the kids. They were so excited for her to come. Mack got up super early the first morning of the break and I found him watching for her at the front door. I'll never find another sitter as awesome as Alanna.
We usually don't start decorating for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but this year we had to at least go get the tree the day before Thanksgiving due to ours and Worth's crazy schedules. (Side note: we JUST got the outdoor decorations put up. It's December 12th!! Worth wouldn't do the light show, so the kids and I just put some blow ups and light up reindeer out there.)
When the Christmas Tree farm here closed, we found a fun lot that sells trees and the kids love posing with their props.
Finally got the tree up 1 day before Thanksgiving, but we had to wait on decorating it.
The Thanksgiving table was set and ready for us, Grandma, Papa, Mia, and E.W., Amos and Anna
These 3 were ready for turkey in their Thanksgiving best.
Worth fried the turkey this year and it was so good!
We have laughed so hard at this picture. It was such a good picture, but The way Mack stood in front of Ellie's hair he looks like Cindy Lou Who.
I thought this was such a good picture of Mia and Dubs.
The kids HAD to get a picture that included Leonard even though Leonard was not too thrilled to do it.
Amos and Anna made it and Ellie and Emma went straight for Ford.
Ellie and Ford
Hardy needed a little warm up time with mom before he would talk to us.
Grandma and Papa also arrived and we got a group picture. Mack had already changed out of his good clothes which had only lasted about 30 minutes.
Another good looking family in our crew!
After dinner, Ellie got more snuggle time with Ford.
After everyone left Thanksgiving day night, we got some lights and a few ornaments up on the tree. It took us another week to finish all the inside decorations.
Nutcracker was up next! Ellie had 2 roles again this year: Clara's friend and Chinese. Ellie did such a good job skipping down the aisle 90 mph to shake this gift in time with the music.
They all looked beautiful in the party scene on stage.
We had 9 nights at Mathis Auditorium practicing and preparing. At the dress rehearsals, I realized that my girls had taken over doing their own makeup and had to snap a quick picture. (The hair still has to be done by me. It's usually complicated.)
Emma was a beautiful pollichenelle(sp?) this year. This may be her last year of Nutcracker as she has hinted that she may just take jazz in the 6th grade. I had to take as many pictures as I could.
This was Ellie's first year dancing on pointe in the Nutcracker and she did awesome!
She has gotten so much stronger since recital last spring.
These 2 were a pain to snap an in-costume picture of backstage just due to logistics. I got it though even though I had to do it in about 5 seconds!
More pictures of Ellie as one of Clara's friends. These pictures are a little out of order.
Another picture of our Chinese performer.
Ellie at the start of the show after she had skipped down the aisle with classmate Emma Shapiro.
Ellie backstage and ready to go.
Emma's grand entrance on stage. She was the first one out doing cartwheels all the way across the stage.
Our sweet little polichenelle!
Emma was also the last dancer off the stage with a cartwheel, jump, and kiss to the crowd.
Her very sweet Discoveries teacher came to watch. We love Ms. Tone!
Nutcracker is definitely a family affair - including grandparents!
