{"id":11993,"date":"2019-01-13T17:37:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T22:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=11993"},"modified":"2019-01-13T17:37:31","modified_gmt":"2019-01-13T22:37:31","slug":"emma-and-eli-december-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=11993","title":{"rendered":"Emma and Eli: December 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

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December is one of my favorite months of the year! \u00a0It\u2019s crazy busy and super sweet all at the same time! \u00a0We get to celebrate Eli\u2019s birthday and Christmas and see lots of family and friends that we don\u2019t ever get to see as much as we would like. \u00a0What\u2019s not to love\u2026it just always goes by too fast!<\/div>\n
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Emma and Eli are both playing basketball for the city of Acworth and we love watching them play! \u00a0Eli plays for the 5-6 year old Bulldogs and Emma plays for the 2nd-5th grade Owls. \u00a0They are both playing well and have lots of fun while they are learning a lot. \u00a0The basketball is great\u2026but more than that, we love watching them learn how to work with new teammates, overcome difficult moments, and all the other amazing life skills that sports sows into people.<\/div>\n
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Our family decided to read through \u201cCome Let us Adore Him\u201d by Paul David Tripp as a family Advent devotional. \u00a0Emma and Eli both helped us read in the evenings and that was very special! \u00a0I went with some precious friends to The Grove Christmas where we got to hear from Pastor Levi Lusko, enjoy a great dinner, and just have a fun night out. \u00a0I think we will make that a tradition! \u00a0On the Friday night before Eli\u2019s birthday on Saturday, we surprised the kids and took them up to Lakepointe Station for an evening of fun. \u00a0They were so excited for the climbing wall, neon golf, and other fun. \u00a0We closed the night out at Pablano\u2019s and they sung Happy Birthday to Eli and brought him some amazing sopapillas!<\/div>\n
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We had so much fun celebrating Eli\u2019s 6th birthday. \u00a0He has grown so much this past year in so many ways. \u00a0God has truly blessed our family with our precious boy and we know that are exciting days ahead for our little guy.<\/div>\n
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Clint had to travel for work during the 2nd week of December. \u00a0Fortunately the week went quickly with lots of activities keeping us quite busy. \u00a0Our family is much stronger when Clint is here\u2026he is definitely the glue that holds us together! \u00a0Emma did a great job in her Orchestra Christmas concert and Eli lost a tooth\u2026what a BIG week! \u00a0We also got to wear our Alabama gear on College football day at school\u2026lots of fun!<\/div>\n
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Some of my favorite moments in December occurred in our living room. \u00a0We love when the tree and decorations are all setup for Christmas. \u00a0This year I decided to add a tub of Christmas books, some blankets, and a large pillow to encourage hanging out. \u00a0Eli often brought his pencil over to work on his word searches and Emma would join me in reading by the fire. \u00a0Even those evenings when Clint and I would need to catch up on work stuff, it was more comfortable by the fire!<\/div>\n
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Emma had her Christmas piano recital and did a great job! \u00a0Both kids sang in the school Christmas program and Clint\u2019s dad came down to spend the day with us. \u00a0We opened gifts in the morning and then went to try the new Fusco\u2019s Wood Fired Pizza (two thumbs up) and then walked around downtown Acworth. \u00a0One of the highlights of the season was taking an afternoon to go shopping with Emma. \u00a0We didn\u2019t buy a thing, but we wandered the mall for hours and enjoyed a Starbucks stop.<\/div>\n
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On December 23rd, both kids sang in church and then we headed up to Summerville for the Santa Train with lots of Clint\u2019s family. Lunch and the train ride were so much fun! \u00a0After the train, we went over to Clint\u2019s mom\u2019s house for the rest of the evening to celebrate Christmas and just spend time together. \u00a0We had a GREAT time! \u00a0Christmas Eve was pretty laid back all morning. \u00a0The kids sang in the 3pm and 5pm service and Clint and I served on the greeting team. We love the candlelight services at our church! \u00a0After church we continued our family tradition of dinner at Waffle House and we loved it! \u00a0We came home and had a great evening at home.<\/div>\n
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Christmas morning was a special time! \u00a0For the first time\u2026our kids slept late! \u00a0We finally woke them up at 8:30 and had fun watching them get excited about Christmas morning. Both kids walked into the living room to find new bikes. \u00a0Emma got Clint a book about New York\u2026which was pretty hilarious as she is always trying to convince us to take her there. \u00a0One of our favorite morning gifts was a bag labeled \u201cFrom: Eli To: Eli\u201d from the school\u2019s Christmas Shoppe. \u00a0We had given him money to buy gifs and I guess he didn\u2019t want to risk it. \u00a0He bought himself a Spiderman fidget spinner. \u00a0We all had a great time with that one! \u00a0The last gift was super fun as we surprised the kids with a week in New York City leaving on New Year\u2019s Day. \u00a0Both kids went nuts! \u00a0We spent the afternoon at the park and came home to eat a wonderful Christmas dinner of steak, baked potatoes, salad, green beans, and dessert.<\/div>\n
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The 26th is traditionally the day we head to Memphis and we hit the road early. \u00a0We arrived in time for lunch with the girls as all the dudes met for lunch and an afternoon at the new Spiderman movie. \u00a0It was a great way to kick off all the fun! \u00a0We stayed with my Mom this year and had a lot of fun helping her with some projects around her house. \u00a0Both my mom and my sister are always such gracious hostesses and we ate well and had a great time all week. \u00a0Our crew treated everyone to a Memphis Tiger basketball game and it was so fun to see all the kids having such a great time together! \u00a0We always have a great time in Memphis seeing family and friends even though there is never enough time to see everyone we\u2019d love to catch up with.<\/div>\n
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On our way back to Georgia, we stopped in Mississippi to go to church with my high school student pastor and his family. \u00a0They have invested in my life for over 20 years and our families are very close. \u00a0What a gift they are to us! \u00a0Dyer is helping plant a church that meets in a high school and we loved visited their campus. \u00a0Afterwards we all chatted over lunch for a few hours and then we drove the rest of the way home. \u00a0We spent New Year\u2019s Eve getting the kid\u2019s well-checks (we never take that for granted), did a few errands around town, had a nice New Year\u2019s meal at Longhorn, finished packing for New York, and rang in the New Year by watching some NYE coverage until around 9am. \u00a0With an 8am New Year\u2019s Day flight to NYC, we couldn\u2019t stay up\u2026but we still had fun. \u00a0The last thing we did on New Year\u2019s Eve was to go through our family jar. \u00a0This is a HUGE Mason jar full of tickets, receipts, and other momentos from the past year. \u00a0And what a year 2018 was. \u00a0We had so much fun remembering all of the fun things we go to do together and spent some time dreaming about what 2019 might hold. \u00a0Thank you Lord for reminding us of your faithfulness to our family!<\/div>\n
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Here are some pics of December with the Strange crew\u2026<\/div>\n
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December is one of my favorite months of the year! \u00a0It\u2019s crazy busy and super sweet all at the same time! \u00a0We get to celebrate Eli\u2019s birthday and Christmas and see lots of family and friends that we don\u2019t ever get to see as much as we would like. \u00a0What\u2019s not to love\u2026it just always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,22,37,12,16,19,23,28,32,18,33,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adoption","category-cedarcrest-church","category-eli","category-emma","category-family","category-funny","category-generosity","category-integrity","category-marriage","category-north-cobb-christian","category-restaurants","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}