Holiday Season 2013

This holiday season was absolutely wonderful! It was filled with friends and family, festive parties, magical Christmas lights, and of course good food! Here are just a few of the moments we were able to capture. We started by hosting our Christmas Dinner Club - unfortunately it was such a crazy night by the time all of the food was ready it was after 9 o'clock and we were all very hungry...so I didn't take very many pictures! At least the food was pretty and we got to use our china for the first time!

I always have so much fun decorating for the Christmas season!

The Willis Family Christmas Tree

These are some of my favorite ornaments - a burlap gingerbread couple courtesy of my Mom and one of the pinecone ornaments from our wedding. Followed by a couple more of the holiday decorations...

John Wayne is being very serious with his Christmas duck.

Caitlin hosted one of the festive events this season - a Holiday "Stella and Dot" Party. Caitlin's home was decorated beautifully as always! She served delicious Cider and Cookies while we all finished up our Christmas shopping.

The lovely hostesses in their pretty "Stella and Dot" jewelry!

Some more holiday festivities - the SunTrust Christmas party then Christmas lights at the Botanical Gardens with Nick and Dedra.

The 2013 Holiday Season wrapped up with several family gatherings spread over a couple of weeks.

Christmas morning at the Willis home!

Ann brought everyone bats from Austin! Everyone loved them, especially John Wayne - he kept trying to steal them! Following gifts we all enjoyed a yummy brunch prepared by my sweet husband!

Willis Family 2013 

The Christmas celebrations ended for us in Savannah at the Carey family gathering. Saturday morning started with a delicious brunch and we enjoyed catching up with our extended family.

This is my Mom's version of the "Griswold Family Christmas Tree"... my Mom grew it in her backyard! Notice the bats from Austin made an appearance in Savannah too!

Taylor got some fun science toys!

This was such a full holiday season filled with friends, family and what I'm sure will be many wonderful memories. 

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a wonderful holiday weekend with friends and family this year. We started in Jesup visiting my family for their traditional Thanksgiving get together. I tried out my new toy - a tripod! Using my new handy tripod I got to join everyone in the family photo!

After the big family lunch and pictures, some of the family headed out into the woods...

On Friday we headed back to Atlanta and stopped by a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree. This was so much fun! We will definitely be doing this again next year!

The tree ready to go home with us!

We then spent Saturday at GaTech cheering on the Yellow Jackets... unfortunately we lost in double overtime, but it was still a great day!

On Sunday, December 1st, we started off our Christmas season at the "Hill Old Fashioned Christmas Celebration". This was a blast! See more about this on my last post.

Hill Old Fashioned Christmas Family Celebration

The Hill family hosted an Old Fashioned Christmas Celebration on December 1st and kicked our holiday season off with a wonderful evening of delicious food, crafts, hayrides and they even ended the evening with a live Nativity and Christmas Carols!

The event was held in the Hill Pavilion on the Hill Family's beautiful property in Suwanee. The hostesses had prepared festive snacks for everyone to enjoy, crafts from Christmas tree ornaments to cookie decorating and they even had a station for making "Ornaments for the Birds to Enjoy".

The food was displayed beautifully and of course delicious!

 

Ornaments for the birds to enjoy! Pinecones, peanut butter and birdseed were supplied to make these fabulous outdoor ornaments!

All of the craft and activity stations were wonderful, but the Smores station was my favorite!

Of course an Old Fashioned Christmas could not be complete without a visit from Santa! It was so much fun to see this! Santa arrived on a tractor drawn "sleigh" to visit all of the children at the event!

One of Santa's "Reindeer" even showed up to help with the Hill Family Christmas Celebration! 

A few of the "grown-ups" made sure Santa had their Christmas list too!

After everyone visited with Santa there were tractor driven sleigh rides for all!

The evening ended with a beautiful reading of the Christmas Story, a live Nativity and Christmas Carols.

This event was such a beautiful way to start off the Christmas season. I was told at the event that this may be the "First Annual Hill Old Fashioned Christmas Family Celebration" and I certainly hope it is the first of many!

Churchman Family Christmas

Last Saturday I got to do a shoot with some of my favorite people, who happen to be one of the cutest couples I know, and their adorable puppydog Tucker! John and Caitlin just celebrated their third anniversary and they are still as adorable as ever. We spent Saturday afternoon in Roswell taking pictures for their annual Christmas cards.

We started in a cute little park in downtown Roswell that was complete with a gigantic Christmas tree! Tucker was such a little gentleman for the photo shoot! 

These two love to play when Tucker isn't looking!

T

The Churchman Family

We finished up a great afternoon at the waterfall near Roswell Mill.