merry christmas

This has been an amazing year for us as a family. Oliver was born back in February. We moved back to Ohio in June. Moved into our new house in November and get to spend our first Christmas together in our new home. No more driving 8 hours both ways to be with our family. No more crying children for a good portion of those 8 hour drives. We are excited to be here finally and can't wait to make some great memories.

Here is a Christmas post that includes a trip to see Santa and making some Christmas cookies. We hope you have a great Christmas and are thankful for all of the blessings that God has thrown your way this past year...I know we are.

Here are the kids with Santa. You can't see it but Santa must have slipped on some snow in the north pole because he was rocking a nice black air cast on his right leg.

No tears from Ollie. Here's to a good track record come Easter time when we visit the oversized bunny.

Charlotte was excited about the candy cane and I was able to get a shot in before she was done with Santa. Not scared of him at all, but just acting very 2 years old that day.

We visited Santa at the Bass Pro Shop so of course we had to stop and see the fish. Not a great shot, but I went to the other side of the tank and captured this beauty. Fish might be Ollie's new favorite.

Here we are using the cookie cutters. I think that's a tree.

Charlotte helped roll out the dough and everything.

Next it was time for the frosting...and for Charlotte's shirt to come off.

Ollie just watched from below.

Decorating our dozens of cookies. Charlotte had a lot of fun being creative.

And by creative I mean just pouring about half a bottle of "frinkles" on each cookie.

Some of our handy work.

Ollie eating some snacks. Don't worry. Charlotte slipped him some cookies later on.

Charlotte doing a little quality control work.

"what cookie?"

a holiday weekend

A great holiday weekend consists of a solid combination of good food, drinks, a packed house with friends and family, crafts, presents, new and old traditions and of course a good load of pictures.  I believe we covered all this weekend, just take a look! We had a great Thanksgiving day and packed the house with thirty family and friends.

sibling turkey love...

look at my ribbons!

Started a new family tradition by hunting, cutting and dragging our Christmas tree at Corsi Tree Farm.

the perfect tree was soon found...

Charlotte had to make sure Daddy was doing an okay job!

long walk back...

And had a great visit with the Smith Family from Virginia.

blurry picture of all of us at the Festival of Lights...

and some cute kiddos playing at the park!

some love for mommy at the park, photo credit goes to Ms. Jamie...

time for some home made pizza, kids style!

We have had a full weekend packed with memories spent with family and friends, let the holiday season begin!

-melissa

what we've been up to lately

Just last weekend we moved into our new home. Pictures and more to come about all of that, but before we moved we were able to make some new memories in Ohio apple picking, pumpkin picking and trick or treating in our new neighborhood. We had a great place to pick apples in Virginia, but we found a place that was pretty good. You can tell that Ollie had a good time to say the least.

Apple and pumpkin flavored donuts were enjoyed by Charlotte.

There was an area with a play-set and Charlotte had fun checking it all out.

A fun shot of Melissa and Ollie in front of the cornstalks.

We were all a little tired after picking apples, but we sure had fun.

A few weeks later we heading to a local place that I used to go to when we I grew up in Ohio to find some pumpkins. Here is Charlotte seeing just how tall she is.

Charlotte and Violet took a quick bathroom break :)

Checking out some baby chickens.

Melissa bought some pumpkin cookies and Charlotte carried it around for about 30 minutes before taking a bite.

An updated shot of the house, just after the driveway was poured.

Charlotte's love for diggers and bobcats has only grown greater. This was a real treat for her as you can see.

I told Charlotte she could paint her pumpkin and so early one morning we did.

We closed on our house on October 31st and because of a downpour, Halloween was pushed to November 1st, so we spent "Halloween" in our new neighborhood. The grandparents came over and Charlotte loved every minute of it.

It has been an exciting summer/fall watching our house come to life. We are ready to start our lives in Ohio in our new home, but more to come on that.

six months and two and a half

We have been parents for two and half years now.  We have been parents of two for six months.  These two keep us on our toes, give us lots of laughs and love each other more than any other siblings I have ever seen!  These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago and we are just now getting them up.  Hope you enjoy our babies that are getting big way too quickly!