A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

It has been almost a month since I last posted, and a lot has happened.  To keep this from being 5 pages long, I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking.

We had an early Christmas with Tony's parents...

This is our first Christmas Tree at home (not sure why the picture won't flip).

I take pictures of Jason every Thursday.  This one was on 12/22/11.  Not sure how many weeks old he is here, because I stopped counting.

We celebrated real Christmas in Charlotte with my family.  Christmas Eve was at Gary and Susan's house with the Ahlstrom clan.

Christmas morning was filled with lots of excitement and special gifts.

This was the most special gift of all: a skating bear music box that Mom and I picked out when I was young.  Abbie was completely enamored with it.

Mom and I made lasagnas for Christmas dinner, which we had with members of the Baptiste and Ahlstrom families.

Abbie learned about 15 Christmas songs in December, pretty much in one week.  We enjoyed playing and singing them together.

 

Over the month of December, we must have watched "White Christmas", in portions or entirety, at least 10 times.  It kept us happy and in the Christmas spirit all month.  Abbie obviously loved it, too!

After Christmas, we had fun playing at Jetton Park and Discovery Place Kids.

Then, we took the drive from Hell to Maryland for Taylor's baptism and New Year's Eve celebration with friends and family.  Jason really hates car trips and we had to stop a lot, making the drive up take 11 hours and the drive back to Durham take 8 hours.  To preserve the sanity of our family, this kind of traveling will NOT be happening again for a VERY long time!  But, we had fun with the family while we were there.

Jason and Taylor

Since we've been home, Abbie and Jason have had some great bonding time playing together and doing "Ring Around the Rosies".  We also finally caught up with the Gorskis, having a fun night just hanging out and playing with the kids.

5 months old!!

Emma and Jason

The new year is off to a pretty good start.  I have lots of resolutions and goals, mostly about getting my life really organized, decluttering by getting rid of lots of material stuff, and really focusing on family and friendships.  I'm excited!