V's 3rd Birthday in Video

Because T is awesome, he put together this little collage of images to share with all:

Celebrating 3...3 times.

Virginia Ann Elizabeth Bruce turned 3 on Sunday, December 20! And to remind her that the Earth revolves around her, we threw three parties in her honor.

Party One: Gymboree
On a cold and rainy Saturday, 13 children and 20+ adults gathered in a padded, colorful room to reenact Goldilocks and the Three Bears in honor of V's 3rd birthday. Does that sound weird?

Despite my initial terror when presented with clown-festooned invitations, the Gymboree party rocked. Between climbing,

jumping into a giant bowl of "porridge"

and running underneath a parachute,

it was right up V's alley. We had friends from the neighborhood, school and work and it was great. Here are a few pics:

Perhaps as fun as the actual party, we came home and opened all her gifts and had Chinese noodles with Grandma and Paw Paw to end the night. What a life!

Party Two: Birthday Morning
A Bruce family tradition is to wake up and eat cake on your birthday. So, at 6:15 a.m. V got cake #2 and another round of presents while the rest of us nursed cups of coffee.

Party Three: Birthday Evening
The Shackelfords get together just about every Sunday evening for supper thanks to Chef Queenie. Since V's birthday fell on a Sunday, I took the easy way out and ordered a bunch of pizza and had the other set of grandparents plus Uncle Charley and Aunt Chrissy over for V's final 3rd birthday party. More cake...

more presents...

more food.

Again, what a life! Happy Birthday Virginia.

The Finished Product

Well I can't very well fill you in on the Christmas tree trip without showing the final product, right?

With lots of help from Virginia this year,

I present to you, our hand-harvested, family-decorated tree:

And a very special Christmas carol to go along with it.

Don't you wish you had that kind of energy? It might help with wrapping all these presents...

Winter Wonderland, Year 2

So once again we packed up the car and headed to the Virginia mountains for a Christmas tree hunt with our BFFs the Coynes. This year we went to Fancy Gap, VA, just a stone's throw from Mt. Airy (aka Mayberry), and we enjoyed the addition of new tree hunter, Molly Coyne.

The weather was good and cold, and while we hoped for fresh snow, we had to be content with what was left on the ground from the week before.

Steph started off the weekend right by showering us with "non-gifts" for V including a princess vest that she refused to take off for the rest of the weekend. The next morning we exchanged Christmas gifts and V got to open her first birthday present of the season, an adorable Hello Kitty tent and sleeping bag set that the kids played with all weekend.

Virginia resumed her serious crush on James...

...but also spent plenty of time playing with "baby Molly" who followed the big kids everywhere they went.

Our tree hunting took us to Hillsville, VA and a very large tree farm who's main attraction, in my humble opinion, was the okra Santas. Luckily, there was no wind this year, which made the freezing temperatures seem idyllic, rather than dangerous (see last year's post here).

Telling the kids to watch out for frozen poop that was in just about every row of trees kept them occupied while we scoped out the perfect tree.

Finally we found just the right one, fat of course, and Tres went to work sawing it down.

The Honda Fit has never looked so tiny as when two lumberjack types attached our giant tree wrapped in a tarp (or could it be a corpse? I'll never tell) to the top of the car.

All that tree hunting wore V out and she quickly found a new use for her purple scarf (neck rest, anyone?) on the way back to the cabin.

Once we all got warmed up with soup and grilled cheese for lunch, we made Christmas cookies!

Other highlights included lots of delicious wine from Wine 101, me losing at every single game including 80s Scene It (never did get a Mr. T question or things might have ended differently) , me single handedly teaching Molly to walk (kinda)

and a hot tub overlooking NC. That's right, a hot tub.

It was a perfect weekend and plans are already in the works for next year's adventure-perhaps in Georgia! Stay tuned for more holiday adventures soon...

We're Ready for Snow

Thanks to Queenie, who outfitted V with this super soft and cute hat, scarf and gloves set.

We're thankful that my mother has always had a fear of one of her children, or grandchildren, getting the slightest bit cold. Imagine what life would be like if we all lived North of the Mason Dixon line! I'm sure we'd all be outfitted in snow suits come September.