Disney on Ice

Since we were staying in PA for the holidays, we wanted to do something fun with the kids. Disney on Ice was coming, and it was featuring Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Tiana. How could we not take Nicole?! Alex was able to take off from work and meet us at the arena. Nicole was in heaven. She was standing up, clapping, swaying, dancing. It was pure joy.

Nicole's Christmas Program

At Nicole's preschool, they did a Christmas program for all of the families. It was so fun to see Nicole up there performing. I think she was more confused by all of the chaos than anything, but Alex and I were beaming with pride watching her. 

Joel turned 1!

This big boy turned 1 on December 15! We had a fun day together, and he loved the balloons. He didn't dig into his cake as much as expected. He seemed more interested in playing with the frosting than eating the cake!

Williamsburg

The week after Thanksgiving, we headed south to Virginia. We stopped in Quantico to see my nephew Matt get baptized. My parents flew in for it, and then we were all headed down to Williamsburg for the week. It was so much fun to have everyone together, and Nicole loved playing with her cousins.

It was an action packed week! We visited colonial Williamsburg a couple of times and ate lunch at the King's Arms Tavern. We watched a fife and drum band walk down historic main street and we played with the animals. Oh, and we shopped.

 

We also visited Jamestown and Yorktown. We told Nicole that Pocahontas was from Jamestown, and she was so excited! We got to walk through an Indian village and get on board the replica ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. At Yorktown, we got to watch them shoot off some guns at the army encampment and walk through a 1780's farm and see some turkeys!

One night we drove out to the middle of nowhere, and there was this huge Christmas light show. It was really fun - we tuned our radios to some good Christmas music and drove through the winding lights.

We did fun Christmas-y things like gingerbread houses, and we even lucked out and heard that Santa was coming to town our last night there.

Right before we left town, we headed back into Colonial Williamsburg to see a parade. It was a great way to end our vacation!

Thanksgiving

We kept things really low key for Thanksgiving, and it was wonderful! I ran a 5k in the morning with some friends, and then we cooked a turkey dinner for just our family. We didn't have to worry about getting the dinner on the table by a certain time, and it was such a relaxing day to spend as a family.

New York City

For some reason or another, I've stopped blogging for the past 4 months. I worked at Williams-Sonoma during the holidays, Joel and Nicole were busy growing up, and I got a new calling at Church. I did take lots of pictures, and for journaling purposes I'm going to attempt to get caught up. So please bear with me.

Alex had a business trip to Manhattan back in November, so of course the whole family tagged along. We had an awesome hotel right in Times Square, so I could walk out my door and have tons of options of things to do. We hit up the m&m store, the Disney store, Toys r Us, and got to hang out with Beth and Kerlyn.

Joel is 11 months!

Every day that goes by, we grow to love Joel more. He took a step a couple of days ago, but I'm pretty sure it was by accident. He hasn't shown much interest in walking (unless he's holding on to furniture), but he's a pretty fast crawler. When he really wants to go fast, he ducks his head down and charges ahead without looking up. It's pretty funny.

He's still a mama's boy, but he will only say dada. When Joel is saying hi he points to you just like E.T., and then if he really likes you, he'll proceed to do a salute with his hand straight in the air. He's getting more and more curious, opening doors, climbing stairs, trying to see what we're doing. He's starting to like balls and cars and trains more, and he goes after anything electronic - computer, remote, cell phones. What a boy!