Home for the Holidays -- Part 1

I'm taking an idea from a friend and doing our Christmas celebration in two different posts. We took a ton of photos and I haven't even begun sorting through most of them from Christmas day yet, so those will have to come a different day. (I got a new camera for Christmas, a Canon EOS Rebel XSi which I absolutely love, hence the hundreds of pictures that I have taken since I opened it.) Here are a few pics from our Christmas Eve celebration though...

Landon, waving his arms in utter excitement for the night's activities...

We started the evening with pizza from Papa Johns (yummy) and then we drove around looking at Christmas lights for a while before coming back home to open our first Christmas gift of the season, some new pajamas...

Our Monkey Children in their matching Christmas Eve attire...After pajamas and pictures, we read the Christmas story together from Luke 2 and watched a Christmas movie before sending the kids to bed. Then Jason and I went to work setting up the house for "Santa's Visit." (I have to admit that one of my favorite things about being a parent is getting to be Santa!!)

These were the only two pictures I took on Christmas morning with my old camera. Jason had me open the first gift of the morning (the new camera) because he knew I would want to use it to capture the days activities.

Two happy kiddos excited with their presents from Santa...

Landon loving his stocking stuffers...

Christmas Part 2 will hopefully arrive shortly. I know you are all gripped with anticipation for our next post, so to help you wait it out a bit, here's a video of our little princess doing her best Sleeping Beauty impression...

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Our December Thus Far

We have been enduring a fun week of the sickies around our house (thanks to food poisoning by way of store-bought ice cream), but I thought that I would try to update everyone on our latest adventures these last few weeks now that everyone seems to be on the mend (fingers crossed!!!)

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday in North Carolina with my sister Lara and her family. My other sister Tasha and her family were able to join us as well so we were able to have all the Cleveland cousins together for some Thanksgiving and early Christmas fun. Here is a picture of the whole clan together. (Hmmmm, do you think Landon enjoyed being strangled by his big sister here?)


On December 4th Landon turned six months old. I tried to get a few snapshots of him to mark the occassion, but my camera failed to do much justice for my handsome little man. Here are a few outtakes that you might enjoy from our little photo session.

We enjoyed putting up our Christmas decorations during the first weekend in December. Abby loved putting the ornaments on the trees and found a new use for our holiday stockings this year.

Last weekend, we headed down to the Washington D.C. Temple to walk around the grounds, visit the exhibits and see the lights with my sister Tasha and her family.

The lights were beautiful, but of course they paled in comparison to the majesty that is the D.C. temple. It is just so gorgeous and we're lucky to have such a beautiful House of God so close to where we live. Afterwards we enjoyed an eventful dinner at Macaroni Grill which consisted of two crying and tired babies, a cranky and tired toddler, one massive diaper blowout and fun for all the adults involved. Ahhhhhh the joys of parenthood!!

And that takes us to today. We have enjoyed this month of reflecting on the birth, life and ministry of our Savior and we are looking forward to spending our first Christmas at home without traveling anywhere for the holidays. Of course we will miss spending time with our extended families, but we WILL NOT miss dealing with holiday travel. After five years of dealing with lost baggage, cancelled flights and long delays, we decided it was time to start creating some Christmas memories at our own home. We love and miss all of our family and friends and wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!!!

P.S. Here's a little early Christmas gift for each of you!! Just spread the holiday joy and laughter you see here...

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Through the Eyes of a Child

Abby seems to get a hold of our camera a lot and she has literally taken hundreds of random, blurry pictures and videos. Most of these we delete (thank goodness for digital cameras), but there are a few that we have kept because we think they are rather funny. Here is a little snippet of our girl's cinematography skills...

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