Christmas Card 2009

Happy Anniversary to Us

Whit and I got the very best Anniversary present-SNOW!!! I really couldn't have asked for a better anniversary day. Whit stayed home from work and went to Yoga with me and then we went to Lillie's Christmas party and during the party it started snowing. By the time we got home it had actually accumulated a couple of inches so of course we all headed out to play in it. It really was a perfect day.

I still can't believe Whit and I have been married for 10 years. I still feel like the luckiest girl to have found the most perfect husband for me. We make a pretty good pair. These last 10 years have been pretty amazing and I can't wait to see what the next 10 years will bring.

Here is some of our snow footage

The next day we had so much fun playing in the snow. The girls really wanted to go sledding and we have a great hill behind us, but we have never bought a sled. It is really hard to buy a sled when you really only use it once a year, but this year we got pretty creative. We do have a plethora of pool toys so we pulled those out and amazingly they worked really well. That is until they popped. The kiddie swimming pool worked really well too.

My Man. Isn't He cute!!!

Of course we had to build a snowman. We had remnants of our snowman into the second week of January. He just didn't want to give in to the sun.

Scary Santa

Why is it that little kids are so afraid of Santa Clause. They love the idea of him sneaking into their house at night while they are sleeping and leaving them wonderful treasures, but when it comes to sitting on his lap, he suddenly turns into the Scary Santa. This year we got the two oldest to sit on his lap, but Adeline was terrified and for some reason this year even Eliza was scared to see him. Eliza said later that she forgot what to tell him and so she was embarrassed. The poor thing. Oh well, there's always next year.

The Joy of Giving

Every year I take advantage of the giving season to get the toy room cleaned out. I have a long talk with the girls about how there are kids that aren't going to get very much for Christmas and how we are lucky that we have so much and wouldn't it be nice to give some of our stuff away so that more children can have a Merry Christmas. It sounds really great, but why does it have to be so hard. The girls were crying over toys they had forgotten they even had. Toys that hadn't seen the outside of the toy box for months suddenly became the favorites. I was pretty proud of them in the end though. They really gave away a lot of stuff. Unfortunately the toy room is still a mess. I think my girls just have far too many toys.

The Mistletoe Half Marathon

I ran the Mistletoe Half Marathon again this year and for some reason the course didn't get any better. I don't know what happened, but the endless hills were still there. We woke up that morning to rain, but it wasn't freezing so we ran anyway. I actually enjoy running in the rain. After the first 10 minutes you are soaked anyway so why not keep going. It also makes the run seem like a bigger deal if you can tell people you did it in the rain. I was happy with my race time this year. I missed my goal time by three minutes, but I beat my last years time by three minutes so it was still an improvement. My time this year was 2 hours 13 minutes 42 seconds. I'll take it and I still have room to improve next year.

The girls hanging out in the back of the car waiting for me at Reynolda Village. They were cheering me on at mile 9.

My biggest fans waiting at the finish line.

Another great post race picture. I don't even know why I take them. I guess it's my proof that I did it-this is what you look like after you run 13.1 miles in the rain. Thanks Kim and Christy for running this with me. I know you are glad I talked you into it.

The Christmas Tree

Here we are decorating the tree for FHE. Jaynie choose the longest straw, so she got the put the star on the tree. However, Lillie was so upset that her dad took the star off and let her put it back on. In the end all were happy. My decorations were a little sparse on our large tree, but it still looked beautiful.

Thanksgiving 2009

While Whit and I were on our cruise my mom and dad and Kylie came and stayed with the girls. They had such a fun time. I am pretty sure the girls didn't miss us a bit. Jaynie and Lillie were able to skip school and go on a field trip to a Civil War site in Appomattox, Virginia. The night before Thanksgiving my Aunt Marcy and Uncle Kevin came down to see my mom and dad and be here for Thanksgiving dinner. I stole this collage of their adventures from my mom's blog. It looks like they had a lot of fun.

It was so nice to come home from our cruise and have my mom and dad here. It made coming home from vacation really exciting. It was also dreamy to walk in the door to a Thanksgiving dinner made by my mom. I haven't had that for 6 years. We had a great night visiting and catching up. I was so glad Kevin and Marcy were able to come down. I love having my house full of guests on a holiday.

Kevin and Marcy had to go home first thing Friday morning, I think we kicked them out a little early since we were trying to get the house ready for a showing that morning-UGH!!! I was sad to see them go, but they had guests coming to their house and needed to get back. The rest of us just had a lazy day. We did take everyone to the mall so the girls could get their Christmas presents from Grams and Gramps at Build-a-Bear. They were pretty excited, but Grandma wrapped them and made the girls wait until Christmas to get them.

On Saturday we did our annual Christmas tree hunt in the mountains. This is one of our favorite North Carolina traditions, so it was special to have my mom and dad here to do it with us. I think they really enjoyed it. We got a really great tree this year. It was huge. Here are some photos of the trip.