St. Nick--A Day Early

As most of you know, we are Catholic...born and raised. Adam and I both come from devout Catholic families, and we grew up going to Catholic school. That said, we celebrate the Feast of St. Nick. It's always been a tradition in our family, along with MANY other Catholics (everyone I knew growing up) that St. Nick brings gifts to good boys and girls on Dec. 6th--the Feast of St. Nick.

There are many stories of the history of St. Nick, but as I remember it, St. Nick was a spoiled rich guy in about 800 A.D. who would steal from the rich and give to the poor around Christmas time...he would give food to those who were hungry, toys and shoes and clothes to the kids who needed them, and would leave the rich and selfish with nothing. I'm sure this is not the exact story, but in my mind, this is kind of how it went....it's been a few years since I've heard about St. Nick...give me a little break....In the past, most kids get candy. My grandmother would get fruit on her doorstep...my mom would get candy...and Stacey and I always got a small toy...

So tonight, after a really LONG day of shopping at IKEA with MeMaw and PaPa, we came home to rest and get ready for St. Nick to come to our house! (simply b/c memaw and papa are going to be gone tomorrow, and we needed someone to ring the door bell!)

Jackson and I started baking cookies that I had promised we could bake on a day that he was good--nothing like bribery! We also made up some homemade hot chocolate and some sticky buns...then Daddy got home from work! St. Nick had not come to our house yet, so we got our jammy jams on and waited. No doorbell. Jackson thought we should go turn the Christmas lights on, and when he opened the door, there were TWO movies on our doorstep! St. Nick had come to our house and was gone without us even knowing!! AND, he brought Jackson two GREAT movies that he has been wanting--Wall*e and The Polar Express!!

Jackson and Daddy checked them all out, and then we called Memaw and PaPa to share the good news that "Taint Nick came! He brought mooooovies...you wanna see dem?! You come ober!"


So Memaw, PawPaw, and Aunt Tacey came over for the 1st Annual St. Nick Movie Night Celebration at the Babcock House....a tradition that I hope we will have every year b/c apparently our St. Nick brings movies. HA!

We had hot chocolate (that I made from scratch with 6 cups whole milk, 2 cups heavy cream, 16 oz milk chocolate, cinnamon, and a splash of vanilla extract--yum!) with mint and marshmallows...



Popcorn in these cute little popcorn boxes that I found at Target for $1.00! Aren't they fun?! There plastic so we can use them again! YEAH!


We also had all those cookies and sticky buns...YUM!


And Daddy built our first fire! We had a fire place in the old house, but we NEVER EVEN OPENED IT! So this was officially, our first home-made fire in our fire place! Toasty!


**Side note--We started watching Wall*e, when all of a sudden my Dad yelled out from the living room, and I turned around to see him falling into the chair holding his nose. Holy shit! Jackson apparently threw one of those hard plastic rolly balls RIGHT AT HIM when he wasn't looking and nailed him straight in the nose! It broke the skin and was bleeding all over...and instantly bruised. Jackson was SOOO embarrased, and Pawpaw was laughing, but you knew the damn thing hurt like hell! Poor guy! We had to put a band-aid across the bridge of his nose. I'm sure he'll have black eyes tomorrow. Jackson threw a ROCKET for sure...but then, the kind of funny part: when we told Jackson he had to say he was sorry and give PawPaw a hug, he looked up at him and said, matter of factly, "PawPaw, you gotta catch it next time." HAHAHAHA! LOL!! I nearly pissed myself...seriously, I think I dribbled a little.**

We had a great night watching the movie and putting on 5 lbs....definetly not on Weight Watchers, but one cheat night won't KILL me....we'll see! It was sooo worth it!