Goodbye 2010...thank you for being so good to us. It's been quite the year.

Cheers friends to a sparkly 2011!

It was wonderful.

...and special and memorable and amazing and all those adjectives one would use to describe their baby's first Christmas.

It was all those things and more.

Each of the Christmas gatherings we went to were packed to the brim with holiday goodness and celebrations galore...

...and an abundance of love was showered on this sweet girl.

I was emailing with my brother in law and we were discussing how Christmas is our Groundhogs Day. If I could choose to do any day over and over, it would be Christmas.
For everything that it represents, for all the memories it brings with it, and for all the newness each year brings...yeah, I'd do it over in a heartbeat.

It's hard actually to find the words to acturately depict how special this past week has been. Nothing I write seems to do it justice and I find myself stumbling over words and ramblings and hitting the backspace more often than not.

So tonight I'll let the pictures tell the story.
Her first Christmas.
Forever engrained on my heart.

Joy is not in things...it is in us.
Richard Wagner

Merry Everything.

A good December.

What a lovely, whirl-wind month it's been. Preparing. Anticipating. Celebrating. It has been wonderful and though at times extremely hectic, the fun we've had makes it all worth it.

There have been lots of parties and gift exchanges...

One party that came with an extremely generous gift from an extremely generous and amazing boss...

Lots of food...

With unfortunately not a lot of working out... oops.

And of course lots of time with baby loves...

And now on Christmas Eve Eve, as I sit down to write, with my girl snuggled in bed and a delicious glass of wine in my hand (well, not really in my hand...I'm typing people)...I am overcome with the Christmas happiness.

The anticipated event has arrived. Oh happy day.

And suddenly there was with the angels, a multitude of the heavenly host,
praising God and saying:
"Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace and goodwill towards men."
Luke 2:13-14

An early Christmas treat.

Christmas came a little early this year.

All the way from Louisiana.

These girls.
My sweetest sweet cousins came to Washington for a winter visit. These two are pure goodness. The kind of people where your day instantly gets better just by being around them. The kind of people that make you strive to be a better person because they are so great. Sounds cheesy I know, but it's true.
Yep, sugary sweetness these two.
And I was eating up every moment with them.

We met up with my family in Leavenworth which has to be the most wintery-wonderland location. It was as if we stepped into a Christmas snow globe village. Magical.


Is there anything better than sipping a holiday latte with the snow falling down? Not in my book.


My little snow bunny, er, leopard did great all bundled up and we almost made it all the way through the Tree Lighting Ceremony. Almost. A leopard does have her limits.


Hope's boyfriend Daniel had never seen snow, or mountains of this capacity for that matter...and I must say, there is something so special about sharing an experience like that with someone. Seeing everything new and fresh, nothing for granted and everything in amazement.


After our weekend in Washington's Switzerland, we got to play tour guide in our beautiful Emerald City.

It felt rather decadent to take a day in the middle of the week to bee-bop around town doing "Seattle" things...



Thank you so much my sweets for coming to visit...I am so happy you came, and oh-so-very happy you got to meet our girl!

She is quite smitten with you both.

Yahooo!! It's Christmas week!

*picture taken by the talented Miss Erin Rinabarger

We interupt this normally scheduled holiday post to bring you...

a football post.
Apple Cup to be specific.
Yes, as in 3 weeks ago Apple Cup. It's December friends, and things are busy, so certain things take a backseat. Like blogs. But we're still in the same month so I guess that's saying something right?

We cheered on our Cougs in what was actually a really exciting game with the Loviks and the Ewings...and Charlotte sported her newest WSU gear proudly. As a general rule, I shy away from pink colored sports teams attire...I mean, if you are a fan of the team you should wear their colors, am I right? However, exceptions are made for babies.

Especially babies who look this cute.

Two things I love.

1. Flashmobs

2. Handel's Messiah Hallelujah Chorus

Those two things together? One of the funnest afternoon activities ever!

This Saturday I gathered with 500 other local singers at the downtown Nordstrom to perform a "surprise" performance of the Hallelujah Chorus. I put surprise in quotation marks only because with the number of people gathered in the store I'm certain innocent shoppers knew that something was about to happen...but it was still pretty amazing.

There was some serious holiday spirit action filling downtown Seattle after this!

Oh Christmas tree...

oh how I love you.

It's here.

Christmastime.

The season my heart does a little happy dance for. The one that we wait for all year with anticipation and plans and dreams of making this year the best Christmas of all. It is here and we are in the full fa-la-la-la-la swing of things.

Because I am a Christmas girl. And on top of that, I'm a tradition girl...and these two things go together quite nicely.
I'm not exactly sure when it happened, my intense love for everything about this time of year...but I feel certain it must be because my childhood memories are held so dear to me. It was always perfect. And not because life was always perfect, because it certainly wasn't. It was just perfect in a way that can only be explained by saying, "It's Christmas!" I don't know if my parents and relatives consciously knew they were creating for us these treasured traditions and memories, but whether they knew or not, they were created.

I love this quote from Anna Quindlen, author of "The Short Guide to A Happy Life" (if you haven't read this little gem, get your hands on it asap)

"Christmas is the mainstay of my year, because tradition is the mainstay of my life.
It keeps me whole."

I have an entirely new sense of excitement this year with it being Charlotte's first Christmas. Because although she may not realize it's her first...

We know it is.

Let the fun begin!

"Texas Forever!"

...said in my best Tim Riggins Southern accent.

We did this Thanksgiving Texas style.

And it was wonderful. While the Northwest was being hit with Artic Blast 2010, we were enjoying milder temps and afternoon runs in tank tops. We explored my aunt and uncles vast property on what Nick called "grown up toys"... I think he left wishing he lived on a piece of land that had 5 deer blinds in the back yard.

We stuffed ourselves silly with all the delicious food, including two different kinds of stuffing: Texas style and Louisiana style.

We napped...

Caught up and chatted...

And little birdie finally got to meet my grandparents...

It was a week of family time. Some more of that re-charging stuff that is oh-so-good for us.




A time to be so thankful for what we have, but also a time to be thankful for what we had. It's impossible to spend time with my dad's family and not feel a bit of an emptiness. With all of the happiness, along with that there is the missing.
He should be there with us. Celebrating with us. And it saddens me that he doesn't get to snuggle this sweet face...
Because he would have been such an awesome grandpa.

So we reflect. We reflect on our many blessings and hold on tight to each other because that's what it's about. The togetherness of it all.


And for this little one? My thankfulness cup overfloweth.