Christmas in PA!

The day after Christmas we traveled to PA to visit and celebrate with family. We had a great time and this was the first trip that Carolyn was a fantastic traveler! We didn't get too many pictures - but here's some of Carolyn opening gifts!

Carolyn opens a stuffed Horton the Elephant!

What could be in this big one?!?

A wooden train!

Zach built this track for Carolyn and she promptly knocked it all over! She prefers just an oval for now!

Christmas Morning!

We stayed home for Christmas morning for the first time this year and really enjoyed celebrating at home before we traveled! Carolyn was really excited about all the festivities and Baby Jesus' Birthday.

Carolyn was most excited for mommy to open this present from her - a candy cane that she picked and wrapped herself. :)

Carolyn's turn!

A new pair of gloves for Dad!

We made cupcakes together to celebrate Baby Jesus' birth!

Carolyn said her favorite present of all was these My Little Pony's! She loves to line them up and comb all their hair and feed them bottles.

Video of Carolyn's New Toys!

An Early Christmas

We decided to start alternating which side of our family we travel to for Christmas and inviting the other side up here to celebrate an early or late Christmas at our house. Diane's mom came up the week before Christmas, (which was a blessing for Diane as Zach was out of town most of the week). Friday night we enjoyed a nice dinner together, made cookies and opened presents. Although I'm sad about not visiting Pittsburgh at Christmas, it was fun to have my mom here as part of the holidays at our house!

Enjoy some pictures of our time together!

Carolyn and Grandma making butter cookies together. I was glad to have some bakers because with the power outage 2 weekends ago and 20 inches of snow last weekend, I've been quite behind!

Putting on the sprinkles - Carolyn definitely needed help controlling the speed of the sprinkles!!

Carolyn's crafts!

Carolyn picked out this snowman soap dispenser as part of Grandma's present. She was really pleased to find it and held it while we finished our shopping. I had warned her about the need to hold it carefully because it could break. When it came time to pay, I asked her to put it up on the register. She looked very intently at the cashier and said "please be very careful with this. It is special and can break" before handing it over!

Zach opens a weight tree to better organize the weights that are all over our garage floor!

Mommy opens her sweaters from Grandma!

Carolyn opens her Little People Zoo from Grandma!

Carolyn is VERY excited about the Little People Zoo. I couldn't capture her expression very well, but as she opened it she said "oh, wow" under her breath and kept tearing the paper.

Building the Zoo!

Carolyn also got a marble building set. She isn't quite ready to build it on her own, but really enjoys racing the marbles down! Dad is definitely the best builder in our family!!

We're looking forward to a special Christmas morning here and then traveling to visit family the day after Christmas!!

Merry Christmas - we hope that your family is enjoying many blessings in this special time of year as we celebrate the birth of our Savior!

Christmas Decorations!

Carolyn is super excited about Jesus' birthday this year, so it was really fun to decorate for Christmas with her!



Zach is getting the tree out and Carolyn is doing an excited little dance!



Carolyn enjoyed hanging the ornaments. Zach and I want the tree to be something fun and special for our whole family, so we are only using non-breakable ornaments.


Carolyn placed hers all in a cluster in one section of the bottom and I didn't rearrange them because it makes me smile to see her little area there!


Carolyn hung her stocking using her stepstool to reach!

Daddy puts the finishing touches on the tree!

What a Weekend!

We had a major ice storm Thursday into Friday that really shook things up around here! We lost power in the middle of the night Thursday and finally got it back Sunday afternoon! Unbelievable. We felt lucky because not everyone has there's back yet, and the damage we suffered was minor.

It got down to 43 in our house, not that bad when you consider we had friends with homes in the 30's....


A little frightening to see your indoor and outdoor thermoter about equal - in December!

A view of our backyard from upstairs.




Zach and our neighbor had to very carefully remove this branch from our power line.



A large part of our neighbor's tree fell on our new fence and broke 3 sections.

We've been Busy!

Well, we've been busy, so it's been almost a month since I've updated...again! I'm trying to get better with pictures/updates, but I've been stuck in a bit of a rut lately!

I've been busy with moms group stuff and our big Christmas party is coming up on Wednesday! I've been busy with our family Christmas things too - decorating, baking, cards, shopping, wrapping, etc! :)


Zach's class finishes up next week, so he's pretty swamped with his final project and exam. He spends much of his time like this lately.


Carolyn is as usual quite busy in her own little way......

Here she is teaching her dog class. She lined all of the dogs up in a row (sorted by the amount of fur each dog has...) and wearing her dog sweater taught the dogs how to bark and eat bones. She takes herself quite seriously and it's hard to watch without laughing too much!


Her most favorite activity of all is crafts and we have to do at least one craft every day. She is happy with any sort of cutting, gluing, pasting, etc. Here we made some animals and then spelled their names out with her letters.


She's transitioned from a nap to a rest time complete with books and animals in her bed. As you can see, she still gets her nap in when she needs it! :)


Within the next few days I should have a post with our Christmas decorations up! :)