December Highlights

With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, we are trying to find ways to keep "the main thing the main thing." This year we started a new tradition of doing a Jesse Tree Advent devotional with the boys. We sat down each night as a family to read a devotional related to the lineage of Jesus and added a corresponding ornament (a paper cutout colored by our artist-in-training Carson) to our Jesse Tree (small tree on the left in the picture above).

We were excited to spend Christmas Eve with our dear friends, The Harveys. They introduced us to a new Christmas tradition called Christingle that symbolizes Jesus as the Light of the World.

We let the boys open their stockings on Christmas Eve where they found their new Christmas jammies to wear to bed that night.

Timmy loved taking in the sights and sounds of the Christmas season this year. Last year, he mostly slept through the whole thing.

My family was in town to celebrate Christmas with us.

November Highlights

As you can see from the pictures, November was quite a busy month for us:

Carson was in his first school play. His class did a "skit" about the pilgrims and the Indians (at least, I think that is what the play was about).  They sure did look cute up there. 

Charles and I took an anniversary trip to West Palm Beach. We were celebrating our 10th year of marriage and decided to celebrate in the city where we met. We loved touring  PBA (the university we attended and where we met) and relaxing by the beach. We had a blast visiting our old stomping grounds.

The big event this month was celebrating Timothy's first birthday. I can't believe how quick that first year flew by. We had a small family birthday celebration on his birthday (November 21st) and had a birthday party for him while we were camping at Disney at Thanksgiving. Timothy took it all in stride. 

Timothy is playing with his birthday presents in this picture. Yes, that's right -- I gave him Dasani water bottles for birthday presents and he loved them. I filled them up with rice, sand, beans, pipe cleaners, and colored water. This kid has always loved playing with water bottles so, in reality, I gave him exactly  what he wanted.

These are the friends he got to celebrate his birthday with while camping at Disney. Obviously he likes to hang out with the older crowd.

He is going to town on his birthday cookie cake. Everyone just kept giving him piece after piece after piece. There was no way he was saying no to that!

We have this same picture with Carson the first time we took him to Disney. He was 15 months old at the time. Now he is five and a little tougher to carry..but still just as cute. 

Daddy and Timmy posing for  a picture in front of the RV we stayed in while camping. 

We didn't take the boys into any of the Disney Parks, but we did give them a chance to ride a horse -- it's almost the same thing, right?! 

Nana & Papa took us to an ice sculpture exhibit at the Gaylord Palms Hotel while we were in Orlando. It was beautiful but very, very cold.

October Highlights

Considering the fact that I am 5 months behind in posting to the family blog, I decided to update by month instead of by event so here are some of October's highlights:

 Flew to Ohio to celebrate Grandma's 70th Birthday. Timmy's first time on a plane and he did great. The boys enjoyed hanging out with cousin's Mason, Maelynn, and Mavrik. 

Auntie Joy was in town a few days before Halloween and decided to whip up this homemade Transformer costume for Carson. It even had working headlights! It was awesome!

Timothy wore pumpkin pajamas for Halloween just because I thought the pumpkin bottom was so cute!

Photo shoot gone awry at the pumpkin patch.

Carson loves making things with his tinker toys -- this is one of many robots/transformers that he has made.