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

ollie eats and is 5 months young

After meal after meal of Oliver staring at our forks as they move from plate to our mouths....after grabbing our plates and food on our plates....we decided that Ollie is ready to eat some solid foods. If you have fed a baby before, solid foods are anything but solid, but you get the idea. Here is a shot before we got started. Clean face. Clean shirt. Ready to go!

But none of that lasted for long. He dove right in a did a great job. Much better eater than Charlotte was her first time for sure.

Can you tell that he is loving it?

Big sister Charlotte had to join in as well. She did a great job feeding her little brother.

She had to open her mouth wide to demonstrate apparently.

Ollie has been eating for the last 3 days now and now that he is a 5 month old we have some new pictures as well. Enjoy.

He loves grabbing his feet and has become an avid roller over-er in the last two days. If you lay him down on his back he will be on his tummy in no time. He hasn't mastered tummy to back rolling over just yet, but in the mean time he is loving his feet. They haven't found their way to his mouth just yet, but just give it a few days.

More toe grabbing.

Full body shot. He's filling out nicely as they say.

He is a happy boy for sure!

memorial day weekend

Our family had a great memorial day weekend.  It is our last official holiday in Virginia and we really got to enjoy it just the way we like: with close friends, a festival, a parade, good food and of course a ton of pictures.  If you make it to the end of this post we will send you a prize!  There are a couple of pictures!

We started our Saturday off with one of Charlotte's bestest friends, Connor and his family.  I think it might be tough for Charlotte to find such cute friends in Ohio, these kids just look so stickin' cute together!

These two were quite the strawberry picking team.  Connor's bucket was filled long before Charlotte's, but she got side tracked a little more than he did...

A few little bites never hurt anyone!

One of the highlights of the weekend was Charlotte's horse ride.  She waited fairly patiently in line, let the lady put on her hat and then adjust it to meet her tiny little head and then it was her turn!

She started with that intense look she gets with her lips all pursed and we were a little concerned for the sweet horse...

But once she found out how fun it was, she was thrilled.  She did not even look back to say farewell to her parents.  It was just a girl and her horse (and the two 4h kids).

Of course, when she was finished she wanted to hug and love the horse and wanted another ride, maybe another day.

On Sunday we got the opportunity to shoot a close friends family photos and had a great time with them.  It is always easy shooting pretty people and they are some of our favorites!  We followed their photo shoot up with a trip to Maymont to see the Japanese gardens.  Monday was a nice relaxing day, filled with laundry, cleaning, cooking and some holiday traditions that we have started as a family.  One of our favorite things to do on Memorial Day is to walk down the street and see our local town's parade.

Both kids were in their element.  Oliver was in the baby wrap and slept through the whole thing and Charlotte had a front row seat!

We love small town parades.  It has everything you need from clubs in old cars to fire trucks!

After our walk home we decided to bust out the sprinkler for the first time this year!

Both Jay and Charlotte got into it and C loved the "rain" and the "shower outside"!

Oliver also enjoyed the sites of his sis and daddy playing, I know he can't wait until next year when he gets to join in on the fun!

Any good holiday always includes a great meal.  We always do ribs on Memorial Day, Jay can make them better than any restaurant and we had some great sides this year.

Doesn't everyone shuck corn in their yellow bikini?

We ended up with some tasty sides to go with Jay's ribs: hasselback potatoes (yes that is slabs of butter and parmesan cheese shoved in that potato), vidalia onion pie, corn on the cob and a freshly picked strawberry chocolate pie!

At the end of the day we were all sleepy, stuffed, a bit sun kissed and some happy campers!  Thanks to all the people that have served our country to make this day and so many for our family memorable!

-melissa