Season Greetings

We had a wonderful Christmas season. Our days were filled with joyful parties, shopping trips, snow, and lots of family time! Dave and I are so grateful for all the wonderful people we know and how they have touched our lives. We loved celebrating the holidays with all of them. Mark's favorite thing this Christmas was by far the Christmas Tree! He was fascinated by its sparkly lights and ornaments. He loved finding different shapes and animals on the tree. We would ask him, "Mark, where's the bear?" and he would point to it, or "where's the ball?" and he would point to it--he's so smart! :) my two favorite men, chillin' together

(hint: you'll notice that in about every picture of Mark that he's holding a spoon, such as the one above. I'm not sure what his fascination with spoons are, but he recently has loved them. All he wants to do it hold them and carry one around with him. Weird.)

We gave Mark an early Christmas present...a walker. But I think we gave it to him a month too late. He shows no interested in help walking, he wants to do it by himself...this stubborn, independent attitude slightly worries me that it's manifesting so soon! (he's not even a year yet)

We had a really fun Christmas party where we stuffed 28 of our friends into our small town home. We have so much fun playing "thumper" and doing a white elephant gift exchange. We walked away with a years worth of Martha Stewart Magazines and an 80's aerobics VHS. I love opening up our home to so many of our friends to celebrate the Christmas season; however, it's quite an ordeal getting ready for the party. We have to rearrange the furniture and borrow extra chairs so that we can fit everyone. Plus, we had to really cut down the invite list, originally we had 48 people that we wanted to invite. Next year we will have to either get a larger venue for the party or have less friends.

Christmas is extra fun having my sister Melissa and her husband, Justin in town. And Natalie back from BYU. We've done so many fun things like going to a Christmas concert in Chicago, eating lots of food, watching movies, and playing games.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, need I say more?

see the spoon? and it wasn't even a Christmas present.

I think one of my favorite Christmas traditions is staying in pj's pretty much all Christmas day.

spoon.

I can't think of anything that gets me more in the Christmas spirit than shopping. That may sound really commercialized, but I LOVE buying presents for all the people I love. Plus, it's even better to buy toys again. I went a little crazy with Mark's presents.

We got spoiled this year with Christmas gifts! Some of my favorites were, fixing the Infinity so that now we have two working cars! A family trip to Orlando for a week in March (which will be a blessed break from Chicago winters). And a new treadmill, so that I can keep up my running while Mark naps. Rock on!