Christmastime is here!

As we finish up getting ready for Christmas I wanted to show you how Marianne has been preparing for all the festivities!

Marianne is not sure she is ready for all the excitement!

Here our friend Raluca is holding Marianne while she looks at her first Christmas present that our friends Matt and Julie brought over! Marianne was not quite sure what to do with it but she is going to love wearing the cute clothes and playing with cool new toy!

Marianne is ready for her first Christmas party!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Family at Thanksgiving

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seems to get shorter every year even though it is always pretty much the same give or take a few days. Once Thanksgiving was over we had the SEC Championship and then a wonderful surprise visit from Julie all the way from Hong Kong. In all of this activity I realized today that it is almost Christmas but I still haven't posted pictures from Thanksgiving. If they had just been pictures of Marianne I might have left them off all together but because they are pictures of Marianne with family I though they were too priceless to not share. Sorry for the delay but better late than never! (As a side note can you believe it was so hot on Thanksgiving that Marianne ended up spending the day in her onesie?! )

Four Generations

Proud Great Grandparents

The Ladies

It is such a blessing that we are all able to get together and enjoy special days! Hopefully one day Marianne will be able to appreciate this fact too.

And Craig thought Marianne didn't like him!

Grandma Gigi loves Marianne!

Cousin Sarah came to visit all the way from Idaho!

Isn't this smile just the best? I love it!

Live Nativity

On Saturday our church had a craft fair and live nativity at our new church building. We wanted to let people know that we were going to be moiving into the area soon and to invite them to our Christmas concert. Our family helped out by playing the part of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus for a little while in the live nativity. It was cold but fun and Marianne was a super sport! One of our friends who is a Clemson fan wanted to make sure we got a picture of Marianne with the "gamecock"!

10 Things We Are Thankful For in 2010

• The fact that we have peace with God through the redeeming work of Jesus on our behalf





• Our beautiful, healthy baby girl





• Our great new house





• Chris' good job





• That I get to stay home with Marianne





• That the Gamecocks won the College World Series

• That the Gamecocks won the SEC East

• Our amazing church and all the wonderful people there





• Our loving and supportive family





• Our fun and faithful friends

Two Notes:

We are also thankful to our friends Vickie and Brian who took the awesome pictures at the top and bottom of this post and other pictures that will be our Christmas card soon!

When we were brainstorming our list Chris also wanted to put that we were thankful for Marcus Lattimore. Since we limited the list to 10 and other things we are thankful for did not make the list I thought it better to leave him off. But I did want to make a note of it because I thought it was funny!

Three New Things

This week started off super rainy. Marianne and I were going out to lunch and I remembered that she had some cool rain boots. They were too big (sorry, Ashleigh) but this got me in the mood to try all her other shoes on her little feet. I found one pair that fit her. She looked so cute in them I had to take a picture!

Doesn't she look so proud of her shoes? It is as if she is saying "Look at me! I am grown up!"

Based on the success of the shoes I thought I would see if the little robe someone gave Marianne fit her. She likes being wrapped up in her towel after a bath so she liked the robe but it is still too big. It did make for some cute pictures though!

I was inspired by some friends stories of how much their daughters liked their bouncy seat to get out Marianne's Ocean Wonders Jumperoo. Marianne looked on as Chris put it together and then she got to play in it. Every time she uses it she likes it more. Today was her third day and she couldn't stop smiling. These picture are the first time she spent extended time in it and she was still trying to figure it out. She is still too short for it so we had to put phonebooks under her feet. You can see them in the last picture covered by a towel so they wouldn't be too slippery!

Surprise Precious Moments

Watching Chris with Marianne makes me love him even more than I already did (which was a lot)! It is so fun to see him interact with her and vice versa. The following picture are times when I walked into a room and found something unexpected but totally precious.
I walked downstairs a few Saturdays ago to find them both sleeping on the couch. When Chris woke up he asked if I ever slept with her like that. When I said no he said, "You should".

Yesterday Chris had to go to a training so he got to finish working from home. I left Marianne upstairs playing at Chris' feet while I went to go make dinner. Chris said he would bring her down if she got too fussy but he never did. I came up once dinner was in the oven to find this. Chris said Marianne had been "helping" him for almost an hour and that she had almost sent an email by hitting the laptop mouse with her foot!

Why I want a new camera

I have really been hinting hard about wanting a new camera for Christmas and below you will see why. These pictures were taken by our friends Jason and Leslie with the camera they bought on the eve of their new baby. The quality is noticibly better than the pictures we take and for every ten pictures they take they get nine good ones. For every ten pictures we take we get one good one! There are a few good ones of the three of us but I am not going to post them yet because one of them might end up on our Christmas card...

Our Little Sweet Pea

Chris said that Sunday was one of the best days of his life. It started with him drinking coffee and enjoy the nice fall weather on the front porch with Marianne. Then while they played together Marianne was laughing like never before. She laughed longer and harder than we have ever heard her and it was all because of the game she was playing with Chris. He was thrilled!




After church we took Marianne to the Botanical Gardens where they were having a special day called Goblins in the Garden. They had all kinds of different activities for children and they had a costume parade. Of course Marianne could do none of the activities and we just watched the parade go by instead of participating but it was still fun. Chris was a proud daddy and wanted to hold Marianne instead of keeping her in her stroller because he wanted people to see her. She was very sleepy and she slept almost the whole time which is why she looks the way she does in all these pictures. But I still think they are cute!

Blog Roll Shout Out

Except for the sports blogs on the right, the blogs we love are written by our friends and family. They are all great in their own unique way but I wanted to point out our newest addition. One of my friends who is super crafty has started a blog about all the crafty things she does. What I wanted to share is that from her blog (The Apple Crate) you can link to her Etsy shop where she has beautiful handmade cards for sale. As the recipient of some of her gorgeous work I know how amazing her cards are and I thought some of you might want to check them out and maybe even order some! But don't buy too many because I plan on ordering some too!

Delaware

Marianne and I had a wonderful time visiting family in Delaware this past week. I was a little worried about how Marianne would adjust to all the new experiences but she did great! Grandma only had to start talking to her to get a huge smile out of Marianne and Marianne seemed to love Grandma's house (especially her couch as you will see below). It was a fun trip and I really have to brag on little baby Marianne. She was a great traveler. Everyone kept commenting about how good she was during the flight. And she was a great sport about meeting all sorts of new people and having to make some changes to her routine! It was such a fun and easy trip I think we will try it again some time!

Isn't it cute how Marianne and Grandma kinda match? And we didn't even plan it!

Marianne loves her Aunt Sue!

Cousin Michael roller bladed all the way over to Grandma's just to be in this picture! Not really, he just came to hang out but he also got to take some pictures and be in a picture.

Marianne had fun sitting up on Grandma's couch. I think she felt grown up.

Four generations

Changing Weather, Changing Clothes

As soon as October came we started having crazy weather. Temperatures dipping into the 40s sent me looking for warmer clothes for Marianne . This was a good thing because at the same time she started to grow out of some of her clothes. Then before we knew it the temperatures were back in the upper 80s. I like putting these clothes on Marianne because I think they make her look a little older!

Check out how short those pants are!

This little dress makes her look so big!

I love this one because she looks like she is dancing.

Chris thinks the onesie tucked into the pants makes her look like an old person

because the pants are up so high on her waist!

When it first got cold I thought about how fun it would be for Marianne to actually wear this one day. But truthfully it will probably never get that cold here. Still I wanted to take a picture because it is so cute and the monogrammed Lacy-Dacy is priceless! I think she is saying "Mom, it is too warm to wear this!"