December Christmas Activities

Christmas in Tennessee is special in many ways. Every town around here has parades, musicals, plays, festivals and celebrations. And every year we try to attend as many activities as possible.

So December is a fun and busy month!

Karyn has an annual pass to Cheekwood Gardens this year and invited us to go along with them when they took the girls for holiday coloring, magician and cookie decorating,

How can you not get in the holiday spirit when you decorate cookies!

We enjoyed seeing the train exhibit which was still there.




The Blair Suzuki Players (a string ensemble) , part of the Music in the Museum program, was fantastic, playing mostly Christmas carols, but included secular and patriotic music as well.



This year we missed out on the parade in town, but did visit the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, a tradition we started when we moved here. We are always impressed by the gardens,







beautiful decorations,




huge Christmas trees


and the thousands of poinsettas!!

We even caught the Shrek show this year!

They have a beautiful, huge, Nativity set up outside, but the day we were there it was too cold to go out and see it. We drove slowly by, but took no pictures.... maybe next year I will get pictures of it. Paul found the perfect “musical” tie!


Of course, we squeezed in Nate and Karyn's birthday's (no pics of the adult birthday celebrations!) as well as Hailey's 4th birthday into our December activities as well.






We also were privileged to visit the Governor’s Mansion this year, which was decked out in every room. It was a great opportunity!

The new 14,000 sq ft subterranean meeting and banquet facility was open for tours as well,

included trees with ornaments provided by elementary schools throughout the state,

as well as one with ornaments from the higher education schools throughout the state.

Our favorite Christmas Concert is put on by West Franklin Baptist Church (WFBC). With our music minister and his wife leaving, (this is the last one they will be leading) we will certainly miss their talents! They outdid themselves again with “A Baby Changes Things”!

Of course, the annual gingerbread house decorating,

And a new tradition we started, going to the Belmont University Bell concert

which featured 45 minutes of Christmas music, both traditional and Christian. A treat afterward was to be able to go up into the tower and see the bells


and meet and talk with the carillonneur

Christmas Eve we spent the evening with Nathan and Chris and Baby David Jakob;

early Christmas morning spent at Karyn and Andy’s home, watching the excitement the girls had opening gifts, then attending a great service at WFBC, complete with scripture reading, candle lighting and music to celebrate Christ’s birth, and having Christmas Dinner at our house in the evening, followed by playing a game (which I won by the way!). It was a wonderful, worshipful, and celebratory day!!

May all of you have a very Happy New Year ! We look forward to getting to know our Lord and Savior deeper in this coming year.