Eating

So Marianne is now eating solid foods and she loves it! She likes sitting in her highchair and she thinks eating is fun. She even likes to try to feed herself as you can see! When she tries new foods she always makes funny faces but so far she has not rejected anything. Peas are by far her favorite.

Christmas 2010

After more than a month with no Internet we are back online! So now for long posts and many pictures. Hope you enjoy seeing these glimpses of Marianne's first Christmas. She was a real trooper opening gifts in four different places at all hours of the day over the course of 3 days!

It was a real treat to start Christmas off by going to church in Chapin. Our family was asked to light the advent wreath so that is why we took the picture with the wreath in it. It was good to take some time to focus on the real meaning of Christmas and to reflect on what that means to us before we embarked on our whirlwind few days.

This was the gift that started our Christmas marathon!

Check out all the fun things from Grandma Ratchford!

Marianne loved the beautiful ornament from Aunt Andrea and Uncle Darren!

One day she will realize not all gifts are chew toys!

Aunt Sandie was so excited to be spending Christmas with baby Marianne!

Chris had fun buying presents for Marianne.

Sadly we don't have a picture of it but this present was the book "Hello, Cocky!"

Cousin Zoe had fun showing Marianne how to play with her new toys!

Marianne is excited about her new toy from Gigi and Grandaddy in Hampton!

"Daddy, is this for me?"

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!