First Comes Love...

We partied hard with neighbors for New Year's Eve this year, and it was perfect - no need to dress up, tackle crowds, or spend big bucks - add to that great friends who are also neighbors, and it's a win/win.

We had a delightful time celebrating Easter this year and two things in particular made it extra special: Hosting our families, and surprising everyone with a gender reveal! Since Spring isn't a busy season for us, I found it really relaxing and enjoyable.  We had baskets waiting for the kids when they woke up, made it to church early in our Sunday best, and had lots of time to prepare for family coming in the afternoon. We decided a while ago that finding out the gender of this baby would be fun to do in front of all our family.  And since we knew we wanted to start the traditional of hosting Easter, it was the perfect time to share this news. As some of you may remember, we're notorious for Easter surprises :) So I talked to the baker at our local QFC who took the sealed envelope we'd received from our doctor to made gender reveal cupcakes for us!  The idea is that you bite into the cupcake, and on the inside is a huge dollop of pink or blue frosting. ...

Easter was a blast this year!  Abigail got really into Easter egg hunting (we practiced with her for a week leading up to the big day...) and she loved strutting around in her fluffy pink dress on Sunday. We went to St. James for Easter Vigil on Saturday night, but quickly realized it was going to be at least 3 1/2 hours long with all the baptisms and blessings of the confirmed, so we left after an hour and a half... ;) Sunday we exchanged Easter baskets and had an Easter egg hunt for Abigail.  She found nine eggs before giving up; not bad for a girl who was sick of the game. Later in the morning we went to my parents house for a big Easter celebration! We had so much fun with friends and family on a beautiful Easter Sunday.  Highlights included "the big surprise!" (more on that soon), celebrating Mom and Kay's birthday (and the chocolate cake Kay made!), drooling over Dad's car and letting the kiddos sit inside, and just getting the chance to be with those...

This year's celebrations were so much fun! While Abigail's still too young to grasp the concept of Christmas, she was definitely more with it than last year and had such a great time opening gifts.  It usually took her a few presents before she got the hang of it and really started tearing away, but luckily she had lots of stocking stuffers to warm up with  :) Celebrations began Christmas Eve morning when we woke up at my parents place and opened gifts from Santa (Santa still comes to their house every year- FYI!) Christmas Eve morning Getting started with some stocking stuffers Abigail and Porsha supervise gift opening Santa came! After presents and breakfast we got ready for our Christmas Eve celebration.  This year my parents hosted, so we got to lounge around a bit more and slowly get ready. Everyone arrived around 1 o'clock and we spent the day hanging out, drinking egg nog, eating our traditional beef dinner, and catching up.  It w...