The Hodges/Garcia Christmas

I, like most people, love Christmas. Who doesn't love spending time with family, eating lots of good food, getting some time off work, decorating your house with lots of red and green, and driving around looking at Christmas lights? This year for Christmas my whole family was able to get together for a few days at my parent's house. We had lots of fun hanging out, seeing family, and just relaxing. One thing my mom always does is decorate the house for Christmas. Here are some of her decorations.

These are my baby shoes on her tree. She also has a pair of Stan's and Abe's baby shoes.

When I was little my mom made everything special and over the top. We had a wreath that had huge jingle bells on it that would hang on the back door. Any time you touched the wreath (or even the door for that matter) you would hear the bells. Some, how every Christmas Eve, Santa would come to the house to make sure we were being good and would take the bells and hide them somewhere around our house. Who ever found them the next day would win a prize (candy). When I was really little I loved this. When I got a little older this terrified me. I never let on that I was scared but inside I would cringe with I saw the wreath gone. You might be asking yourself why I was so scared. Well, wouldn't you be terrified that Santa could come into your house without anyone seeing him in the middle of the day. By the 4th grade I grew out of the scared stage, just in time to find out the truth about Santa. I have to give my mom credit for coming up with wonderful ideas for making every holiday special and memorable .

But back to this Christmas: We all spent most of our time in the kitchen. Stan, the chef in our family, made four wonderful meals. When I say four, I mean he made two dishes with shrimp and made me and Lindsay our own meals since we don't eat shrimp. Not only did he make four meals but everything was from scratch. I hope one day I can cook as good as Stan.

While Stan and Justin slaved over dinner we made sugar cookies. Well, Lindsay made them and I just helped to decorate them. We had so much fun and the cookies were delicious.



For as long as I can remember our family has had a contest to see who could be the first person to say "Christmas Eve gift" to my Mom on Christmas Eve. If you happened to be the first to say it to mom, you got the Christmas Eve gift. This year I won!!!! It has been a long time since I have won. Needless to say I was very happy. I set my alarm for 12:00 but thought my mom would not like it if I woke her up. So I waited until 6:30. The best part of winning is when your brother or dad thinks he beat you to it and you are able to hold up to gift and say "I already won!!"

While driving to my grandparents house on Christmas Eve we had to entertain Justin with bubbles.

This is my cousins sweet baby!!! He was so fun to play with and watch open gifts.

This year we went a less traditional route with our Christmas dinner and had steak and chicken. Again, this was another meal that Stan with the help us Justin made. It was wonderful!!!!


Christmas morning was fun, like always!!! We all still get excited to see what Santa has brought us. This year I was the first one up and ran around the house waking everyone up. Since we have gotten older we no longer open our presents right away. Now we all drink some coffee, start making breakfast (monkey bread), and then divide up the gifts. Once breakfast is in the oven we all head into the living room and see what Santa has brought us. Here is some of the loot Justin and I got this year.



We had a great time with our family and are looking forward to celebrating Christmas next year with John Hayden, who is expected to make his appearance on January 23rd. For those who don't know my older bother and his wife are having a baby in less than 3 weeks!

Celebrating 5 years with Mr. Right!!

On December 16, 2011 Justin and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. About a month before our anniversary, I started thinking about surprising Justin with a weekend trip to Point Clear, Alabama. The reason I wanted to surprise Justin with this trip was not only becuase it was our anniversary (that was the main reason) but also to congratulate Justin with the launch of the new MC website. You might be wondering why I chose Point Clear. Well, we stayed at the Grand Marriott in Point Clear the first night of our honeymoon 5 years before. At the time we lived in Marietta, Georgia but got married in Ocean Springs and didn't want to drive back to Atlanta on our wedding day, so Justin planned for us to stay at the Grand Marriott. We both loved our room and the few parts of the hotel we were able to see. Unfortunately, we were only at the hotel for about 12 hours.


My plan was to get Justin to take off a half day on Friday (our anniversary) by telling him that I planned for us to do some things around Jackson for his birthday, which was the day before. He had agreed to take the time off earlier in the week. So my plan was coming along very nicely...until a few days before our anniversary. Here is how the conversation went.

J: So I thought about surprising you with something for our anniversary but I thought we should talk about instead.
S: What are you talking about?? (Trying to play it cool)
J: I was thinking we could do one of three things; stay the night in a hotel in Jackson, do what we had planned just dinner and maybe a movie, or go to Point Clear for the weekend.

Well, I couldn't hide my smile and I did think about telling him we should just stay home a just do dinner and still try and surprise him, but I decided I should tell him that I was already planning a weekend trip to Point Clear. I still got to see the surprise on his face it just wasn't quite the way I wanted to tell him!

I was able to book the same room we stayed in the first time we went. About five minutes after we got to our room, there was a knock at the door. When Justin opened the door the person gave Justin a gift for our anniversary. We both thought it was a special touch and we have a great keepsake from the hotel.


While in Point Clear, we rested, walked around the hotel grounds, shopped the cute town of Fairhope, made our way to the outlets in Foley to do some shopping, ate at some good restaurants, and went to Bellingrath Gardens to see the Christmas lights. It was a great anniversary weekend I hope one day we will be able to visit the hotel again. Maybe when we are celebrating our 10th anniversary.

Here are some pictures of our weekend. While waiting almost an hour in the car at Bellingrath Gardens, Justin and I got creative or...well lets face it...bored!


These are just a few of my favorite pictures from Bellingrath Gardens. This 65 acre garden transforms into a beautiful light exhibit during Christmas. If you ever find yourself in the Mobile, Alabama area during the holidays you should make a point to visit Bellingrath Gardens.



Here a some pictures from the hotel. We loved how everything was decorated for Christmas. We even got to see Santa getting our of his...van?

Christmas Party Garcia Style

Sometime back in June Justin asked me if we could host a Christmas party. Of course I would not pass up a opportunity to host a party. Fast forward a few months and Justin still wanted to host the party, but didn't want to plan anything about the party except that he wanted to have hot chocolate and apple cider. In September we set the date of the party and I started working on the menu. It was so fun planning everything. I'm thinking this might be an annual thing.

I did have help in the form of a Christmas elf, that goes by the name Katie Boles. I could not have planned and cooked everything for the party without her help. The day of the party Justin did help me clean up the house but not before he forgot about his marketing final exam (which is an entirely separate story in itself). Needless to say, when he realized he had missed his exam he emailed the professor, she was nice enough to let him take it later in the day. Good for Justin...bad for me since he would be gone. That is when my Christmas elf came and saved the day. Katie got to the house around 10:30 and stayed until after midnight. Katie you are the best!!

I can only speak for Justin and myself, but we had a great time and thought the party went well. Here are some of our party guests and the delicious spread we served.

We had an ornament making station set up in the office.

Justin's must have - Hot Chocolate Bar

Katie my wonderful Christmas elf (and Jack)!! We couldn't have done this without her.

Christmas Explosion 2011

I LOVE Christmas time!! I love that for one month out of the year we take down all our normal home decorations and put a huge tree, decorate it with lights and put lights on the outside of our home. If I had my way, I would decorate my house according to the next holiday all year round. Instead of taking down Christmas stuff and putting up our normal decor, I would be putting up Valentine stuff. Luckily for Justin, our home decor does not follow every seasonal holiday. I do however put up a wreath and maybe a few other things, but nothing to the extent of what we do for Christmas.

I hope you enjoy looking at some of Christmas decor. I know enjoyed putting it up.


One of our projects for 2012 is to update our mantel. I would really love to paint it white and get rid of the brass. I like the brick but it needs little love to make it the focal point of our living room.

I really loved the way my tree turned out this year. After watching numerous videos about how to use deco mesh, I think I finally got it! Our tree was full of red and silver ornaments that coordinated. However, we had three very special ornaments on the tree this year. The first is an ornament we got on our honeymoon in Puerto Rico five years ago. The second is an ornament of the Radio City Rockettes we got on our first anniversary when we went to NYC. The third one is an ornament we got from Paris when we went there last year on a mission trip.