2nd Day of Christmas Giveaway with Whitney Capps

Welcome to our 5th annual 12 Days of Christmas giveaways!.

Each day I’ll feature one of my Proverbs 31 sisters offering a recipe, idea or memory and giving away a prize for the day!

Next up?

My fashionable friend and speaker extraordinaire:

Whitney Capps!

 

 “I love kicking off the Christmas season! Our family has a tradition of going to eat dinner at a nice restaurant to have a meal together.

We leave there and go ride “The Pink Pig,” an Atlanta holiday staple hosted by Macy’s at one of the major malls.
We then go in the mall to let the kids sit on Santa’s lap. It’s a night my kids (and the hubs and I) anxiously await. But while we love the tradition; it is VERY hard!

Chad and I have four little boys 7 and under. My brother and his wife have three girls and one boy, 6 and under. My parents have celebrated the birth of a grandchild once a year since 2005.

So when I called to make our dinner reservation at Maggiano’s, I reserved a table for 14-six adults and eight children. As you can imagine a white napkin and real plates kind-of-dinner for our whole crew takes a lot of grace and a lot of patience.

We just enjoyed our annual tradition this past Friday night. Before dinner was complete I was exhausted. I had cut up four bowls of spaghetti, fed a wiggly infant, played several games of tic-tac-toe, snapped a few pictures, nearly spilled a drink and tricked my kiddo’s into trying calamari.

I ended up eating my appetizer with my entree. Both were cold by the time I got to enjoy them. As I took a bite and then passed out DS’s to the boys (a thing I swore I’d NEVER do at dinner), I looked around the table and realized I hadn’t had one conversation with my parents, my husband or my brother and sister-in-law. It was wild! And yet, simply wonderful.

I haven’t always enjoyed the chaos. I spent the first few years of motherhood waxing nostalgic about how nice it had been to go to an adults only dinner. Now, half a dozen years later, I have a sliver of the perspective Mom’s of high schoolers and college students have. It is true.

This thing called childhood goes by too quickly. I can’t believe I have a 7-year-old. I have a kid who rides the “Pink Pig” because it’s tradition not because it’s fun.

In seven more years, he’ll likely be bigger than me. All too soon, I’ll eat hot meals because no one will need me to cut up his spaghetti. They won’t wear matching sweaters or sit on Santa’s lap.

Our little holiday tradition might have been a three-ring circus but it was memorable. It was certainly improved by my choice to cherish the chaos. Maybe that should be the new holiday tradition for me. My youngest is 11 months old. Chaos is going to be my holiday companion for years to come.

Now this girl can handle a little chaos. I can bear it the month of December. A lot of chaos, though, and I can become unglued!

Sadly most of my chaos is self-induced. I’m resolving to make 2013 different. Wanna join me?

I’m giving away a Let.It.Go kit to one lucky winner. It includes a copy of the book, the six-week teaching dvd and companion Bible study workbook. Karen’s latest book is a tremendous gift for those of us who obsessively claw after control and peace. (Not to give away the ending, but Karen kind of helps us understand how the two are often mutually exclusive. Ugh!)

I promise you’ll love this resource. If you are the winner of this giveaway, Karen will give me your name and email address. I’ll contact the Proverbs 31 office and have them ship your kit to you!

Thanks for having me, Karen. You are as hospitable in cyberspace as you are in real life.  (Oh, and for more fun pics from the night, hop on over to my blog.)

Merry Christmas, y’all!

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Okay–to be entered in today’s giveaway, tell us your favorite way to get together with family. Or, if time is tight, say “Pink Pig”!

Remember, you have until Sunday night December 16th to comment on all the posts. One grand prize winner will be chosen from among the gals who post on all 12 days! What the grand prize is will be announced sometime this week (when I figure it out!!!)

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