Merry Christmas!!

Here is a copy of our Christmas card... thought I would share it with whoever reads my blog :)

We had an amazing Christmas this year! We started the festivities on X-mas Eve --- Travis, me, Evelyn, Chuck, Kim, Bob & Sally all met up for Mass together. Here are a few photos:

My family (brother Gary, his girlfriend Emily, Mom & Dad) all flew in on X-mas morning. It was so fun to have a full house for Christmas!! I had spent extra time decorating and making cookies and sweets this year. I couldn't help it -- I was excited!! My family and Trav's family all came to our house Christmas day to have an early dinner and celebrate together.

Evelyn loved the wrapping paper, bags, and boxes. Cocoa was excited for about the first 30 minutes -- and then she took a nice long nap.
Here is Travis, my mom, Evelyn and Cocoa on the couch:

Here is Emily and Evelyn (I think this picture is out of order -- this is before presents)
Here is Chuck and Kim (holding a dog toy)
Here is another random picture:
Evelyn surrounded by gifts:
That is all for now... I am going to save Evelyn's birthday post for tomorrow or Thursday... Travis and I are going to veg on the couch right now and watch a movie :)

Double strollers?

Anybody out there have a recommendation for a good double stroller? We will have a newborn and a 16 month old... we have just started looking into strollers and I don't know where to start.

The ones that hold the infant carriers just look so enormous!! But I don't know if I would be able to live without using the infant carrier/carseat. When Evelyn was little, it was so easy to just pop her in and out of the car, stroller, etc -- and not have to unbuckle her or wake her up if she was sleeping...

Any tips or ideas?

Just pictures...

So I am completely behind on updates -- so I am just going to include a few recent photos...

Here is Evelyn in a new festive outfit from her Nana (Trav's mom):

Here is Evelyn meeting Moose (her godparent's cat) -- she was much more interested in him than he was in her...
And here is my favorite --- pictures from our tree cutting (these were from the beginning of December sometime). Keep in mind --- it snows like once a winter in Seattle. I was extremely excited to be going to get our tree while we were getting a "snow storm". It definitely made it feel like Christmas was coming :) I also really love the place where we get our trees from... it is a huge tree farm about 30 minutes away. They give you a saw and let you go cut down whatever tree you want. They also provide free hot chocolate and apple cider -- YUM!

Look at Trav's jacket in the picture -- it totally looks like something a gas station attendant would wear, doesn't it?? These were part of our old process engineer uniforms from when we worked together in Iowa... they even had our names embroidered on them -- aren't they great?!?

11 month photos... very late

I just realized that I forgot to put Evelyn's 11 month picture on here... things have been SO busy lately!! This picture was taken actually one day before she turned 11 months.
I was anxious to get the picture taken because I wanted to work on the invitations for her first birthday party. It was quite the little art/computer project for Travis and I. It was a lot of fun!! Here is what one side of the invitation looked like...
We are having her party on her actual birthday (the 26th) --- just invited family and a few close friends that live in the area. We have both sets of grandparents in town for Christmas -- so we wanted to celebrate it when all of the immediate family could get together. Should be fun!!


I have more updates (from Christmas tree cutting to decorating the house, etc)-- but will post them tomorrow or something... I am going to wrap a few Christmas presents and then relax and watch some tv.

Think BLUE!!!

Yup -- it's a BOY!! I had my "big" ultrasound today and we found out the news. Here is the picture that the ultrasound technician printed out for us... she said it doesn't get much more obvious than that!

The picture cracks me up -- hopefully our little guy doesn't get embarrassed someday that I posted this on the internet.. ha ha ha

Evelyn is going to have a little brother next April :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well -- Thanksgiving is almost done. It was a pretty relaxing day. We watched most of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade... Evelyn took a long morning nap (I might have taken a little nap, too)... then we went for a nice long nature hike/walk. There is a great trail by where we live that is very hilly and woodsy -- it takes about 30 minutes to get to the end of the trail -- so we got a full hour of exercise and fresh air today :) Here are a couple of pictures from our hike:

We went to our friends Boris and Sarah's house for dinner -- it was great! I didn't get home in time to watch Grey's Anatomy though -- I will have to watch it online tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving!

Tuesday Updates...

Well -- I accomplished most of the tasks that I had hoped to do while Travis was out of town. One of the main things I did not do was clean my closet and make a big trip to the Salvation Army. I plan on doing that this weekend still. Maybe that way Travis will be motivated to go through his things, too.

On the other hand, I also accomplished a few things that I didn't originally intend on doing (I did a bunch of Christmas shopping, I purchased fireplace fans, and I cleaned some other areas of the house not on the list)

Here are some new pictures of Evelyn:

I bought her a new hat today, and put it on her after I picked her up from daycare. As soon as Travis saw her, he said "who's the skater?". Apparently he thought her outfit made her look like a little skater... I guess I have to agree with him. Especially with the hat on!!Travis missed his little girl when he was out of town. She missed him, too!
Here is Travis trying to steal a few kisses from Evelyn: