Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our happy, and tattoo proud Family! 

This Christmas was the most insane Christmas I have ever experienced. We celebrated at five different houses, not including our own. Additionally, we were blessed by having a very large family and that puts a lot of people on the "To Give" list. Don't get me wrong, I love giving presents, but it takes a lot of stress and time and money to cover everyone and I have kind of decided that it takes the fun out of the holiday and distracts  from the importance of the holiday as well. I'm not sure where I stand on the birth of Christ aspect, but Christmas is about family and spending time with those you hold dear to your heart. 

It's been awhile. . . again

Hello readers, I hope you are still there! I took a little break from the blog, life was more than a bit hectic and I had some personal things going on that left me little energy for anything. I hope to turn this blog into a regular thing again, I love blogging and I really have missed it. Now to catch you up! (well on the big things at least)

Cordelia has gotten A LOT bigger: 

 Three months

Four Months

 

Five Months

 

Six Months

 

Seven Months

She can crawl, eat mushy foods, sit up by herself, pull herself up to stand and says "mama" and "dada"! It's amazing, and the time has gone by so fast it's a blur. 

We attended two absolutely beautiful weddings. The first was for one of my old time friends and her prince charming. The wedding was at Bordeleau Winery, such a beautiful venue! The amazing photos below are  care of their photographer. It was Brendon and my first night away from Cordelia, but we had such a great time, and Ashley and Brandon are such fun people (as I'm sure you can see from the picture below! ).

The second wedding was for our mutual friends Tuan and Camila. I was honored to be in the wedding party. They had such beautiful weather and the people at their venue, Bretton Woods, were wonderful.  These beautiful photos were taken by an awesome photographer I know- check him out here. There will probably be a longer post about this wedding later :)

 We wore super cool shoes

Camila's Brother married them, it was very heartfelt 

Cordelia Hung out with Daddy

 

We played in the photo booth :)

We were able to rejoice in our third anniversary of this day:

We celebrated our first Halloween! As a Rainbow, a leprechaun, and a pot of gold. 

Well... those were the biggest things, I have a ton of other little things to catch you up with later, but for now I will leave you and go back to my horrible holiday to do list! Yikes 

Happy 4th!

Happy belated fourth of July everyone! We had a pretty mellow independence day this year. I dresses Cordelia up purely so I could take cute pictures of her first Fourth of July:

And then we took some not quite as cute family photos:

Well, photos of Cordelia are always cute

Don't you love Cordelia's Dress? I want one in my size

Then Daddy and Cordelia took a nap (Daddy worked during the day)

and then Daddy took me to see the fireworks! We decided Cordelia was too little to take this year, but we are going to take her next year- I am so excited!

Baking

My Hubby and I, between the two of us, have a very large family; so for the past three years we decided to give baked goods instead of "things" for Christmas presents. This year everyone got their own little bag (instead of larger boxes for couples / families) so no one had to share :) Each bag contained chocolate, pecan, and almond fudge, cookies and cream fudge, and little cocoon cookies. 

We also celebrate Christmas at three different houses, and this year we decided it would be nice to bring a dessert to each house! This is my grandmothers pound cake- it is the first time we managed to bake it correctly. We took it as an after breakfast snack at my mother in law's house. 

  I forgot to take a picture before we started to eat, but this is the Oreo crust, pudding pie, that my hubby made for our lunch dessert at my mom's house. (The crust was store bought, but the pudding was home made and really yummy)

Lastly, this is the white chocolate, hazelnut, pumpkin cheesecake I made for the dinner dessert at my hubby's father's family's Christmas dinner. It was a new recipe and delicious! It was fun to do all the baking, and I enjoyed spending the time with my husband, but I may not bake anything till next Christmas! 

Christmas Cheer

I love Christmas. It's taken awhile for me to love it- its hard to love the holiday when you were born the day before. I probably didn't appreciate the holiday until I moved out of my parents house. My mom is a Christmas nut, she starts playing Christmas music the moment Thanksgiving dinner is cleared from the table, she covers the house in decorations, and she loves buying presents. 

When I moved out I realized that life wasn't the same, and that if I wanted Christmas cheer in my home, that I would have to make it. This is my tree this year- its just a baby tree, but I was too worn out for much more. (This tree took me a good hour to decorate as it is! ). My hubby and I put up lights too! Those pictures will be coming soon (we ran out of lights, so we aren't really done yet). In addition to this, I am listening to a Christmas station on Pandora while I write my last two papers of the semester. Wish me luck I have two papers, two presentations, two exams, and two weeks left till I am off for break!   

Happy 4th!

My hubby, nephew and I went and watched fireworks at the local high school. They were really great fireworks, but then again I love fireworks! These are some of the photos I took while we were waiting for them to start. I promise that I will do a real outfit post soon, it has been so hot that by the time I get to take a picture of my outfit I have melted! Thats why the only outfit photo I have from the 4th is of my shoes. These are one of my many pairs of Tidewater Flip-flops, We sell them at my work and they are the most comfortable Flip-Flops you will ever wear.  I have about 12 different patterns and I live in them all summer!

I hope you all had a wonderful fourth of July!

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

My Grandfather collected hand blown glass balls,

and displayed them on a white Christmas tree every year.

Pop truly enjoyed searching for new additions to his collection,

and displaying them for all to see.

Pop passed away a couple of years ago and so we don't get to watch

him put up his tree, or go on hunts for new balls with him, but he did

leave his collection to his grandchildren, and my brother and sisters

and I continue his tradition.

Each year since Pop passed, we exchange glass balls we have

picked out for each other, and we put up our own tree.