Merry Christmas!

I meant to post part of this post before Christmas, but I ran out of time with all of the shopping and hustle and bustle.  So, here we go on a very long post that includes all of our 

Christmas events from both before and after!

First, our Christmas card! I was very please with how it turned out!  We had some professional pictures taken that we used that turned out great.  A special thank you to my Mom for literally jumping around during the photo shoot to get Annie to smile in almost every single picture!  :)

We had a sweet first Christmas as a little family of 3!!!  

Annie had to see Santa Clause of course so we took her to see him at the Lighting of the Tree ceremony in our neighborhood!  It was a fun night visiting with neighbors and waiting in line to see Santa!

Unfortunately, we didn't get any great pictures.  

She was really tired at this point.  Thankfully, she was not scared yet of Santa!

You can also see Brad's shadow across Santa's lap which doesn't make for great pictures.

After seeing Santa on Friday night, we were ready to get our tree.  

On Sunday, we went to the local tree lot and picked one out!

These twin 12 year old boy scouts were very helpful!

Love this picture of Brad and Annie!

The tree turned out great especially with all of the presents wrapped and ready to go on Christmas Eve!

Brad and I got Annie this white, adirondack baby swing for our front porch!  

I can't wait to hang it and let Annie try it out!

We followed our usual Christmas traditions again this year which starts with Christmas Eve service at our church.  It is such an amazing service with the church beautifully decorated and a special brass band to go along with the music!

After church, Brad and I joined his family at Stix for dinner.   It was not the best timing for Annie so she and I ended up leaving early from dinner so that she could eat and nap.  After everyone else finished dinner, we all exchanged presents!

We finally got some great pictures with Brad's family!

We loved having Grandma in town this Christmas!

Annie loved her first Christmas Eve!  

She stayed up all night without a nap but was in such a great, happy mood!

Everyone took a turn cuddling with the baby!

Grandma had her laughing out loud!

I love this one of JoJo and Annie!

On Christmas morning, we headed to my parents house to exchange gifts by the fire and

 eat our yummy Christmas morning breakfast!  Afterwards, we went to my Aunt Janet's house to meet up with our extended family for a meal and a game of Dirty Santa.  

I hardly took any pictures all day with my family.  I did capture Jeffrey playing the guitar for us.  He is so good and we are all so glad to have a musician in our family!  Too bad this is just an iPhone pic.  I will have to get a better one with my camera.

Annie loved hearing and watching Jeffrey play!  She was entranced!

I also took these of Grandmax (my grandfather) and Annie!  I love them!

Overall, we had a wonderful Christmas that was extra special with Annie!  Thank you to both of our families for all of our wonderful presents!  We love you all!

Thanksgiving 2011

I am behind on a couple of posts, but in an effort to get caught up and be timely with this post, I am going to go ahead with this Thanksgiving post and come back to the other two posts later.

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We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year!  

I am most thankful to have our little family of 3 this year!  It has been so sweet and so fun to be a little family :)  Unfortunately, we did not take a picture of the 3 of us.

One of the best things about being married and having both families in town is that we get to celebrate with two Thanksgiving dinners!  We started out at the Oser's house on Wednesday night with a delicious meal!  I can't believe we didn't get a picture of the family, the beautiful table, or the delicious spread of food.  I had my camera but just forgot!  Annie loved being at JoJo and Grandpa's house and enjoyed talking and cooing during our dinner!

On Thursday, I woke up early to cook a turkey by following Martha Stewart's Turkey 101 again! 

Brad also joined in the cooking.  He worked for hours peeling the hard boiled eggs for deviled eggs.  I am usually a very patient person and the more patient person between the two of us, but peeling eggs that did not want to peel did not bring out a good side in me!  Brad was much more patient and eventually got pretty good at it too!   He also made the filing using his family recipe and they were delicious!!  I told him he earned a permanent job as the deviled egg chef :)

After our cooking was complete, we headed to Mom and Dad's house to meet up with the rest of the family.  

We had 17 people including Annie!  

Mom's tables looked beautiful!  Ii is a lot of work, but I love using all of her china, silver, and crystal!

 Mom's turkey turned out perfectly and was the star of the show!  

It was gorgeous and delicious!  

We feasted on a delicious meal and enjoyed each others company for the rest of the day! 

I sadly forgot to take a group shot here too, but here are a few pictures from the day.

Love this one! 

I love Thanksgiving and think it is my favorite holiday all year!

Happy Mother's Day!!

Happy Mother's Day to my Mom and Mother-in-Law and to all of my friends who are Moms too!

I had a great first Mother's Day and hope that my Mom and Mother-in-Law did too!!  

Brad and Layla got me a manicure and pedicure to use for the upcoming weddings in our family!

Here is my new table set!  We enjoyed the table so much all day!  

My family came over for brunch.  Emily, Elizabeth, and I planned a menu including omelets with lots of fresh ingredients and fruit salad and cinnamon rolls.  It was delicious and all turned out very well!!  

This is the only picture we took.  Unfortunately, it did not turn out very well.

For dinner, we had Brad's family over.  I cooked chicken-pot-pie and rolls.  As you can see, Layla helped me while I cooked!  Nicole brought her delicious salad and homemade salad dressing that I love!  For dessert, I made one of my all time favorite strawberry cakes!   (Deana - it did not turn out as well as they used to...the cool whip was making such a melted mess.  How did we used to ice the cake?)

We finally got a couple of good pictures with Brad's family!  

Tom & Joanne

Me, Brad, Taylor, Tom, Nicole & Joanne

It was a great day full of food and celebration!  Happy Mother's Day!