Happy Christmas Season

The Note With Our Christmas Cards This Year:

Hi, family and friends! We pray you’re having a happy Christmas and continue to have a very happy and blessed new year. 2016 was a great year for our family and we are excited for all that 2017 has in store! We celebrated our big 10 year wedding anniversary this past June. Tony has been working hard to finish medical school and has chosen a career in Family Medicine. We find out in March where he will be matched for residency, he graduates in May (5/21- everyone is invited!) and begins residency in July. We plan on moving after we get our residency placement. Melissa loves staying home with Elliott and is especially enjoying this time with him before the new baby comes. Elliott turned 2 on 11/29. He makes us laugh and keeps us on our toes; he is so sweet, has a BIG personality, and is often too smart for his own good! We are expecting “little brother” towards the end of January. We are so excited (and a bit impatient) to meet him and introduce him to the world! We end our 2016 feeling so happy and blessed! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We love you all!

(Obviously, the note with our Christmas cards was written prior to our house flooding! More about that later... but 2016 is definitely ending a little more interesting than what we initially thought. Ha.)

It has been such a happy and busy Christmas season. Some of the highlights:

On 12/3 my mom and I went to the Amy Grant Christmas concert with Michael W. Smith and Jordan Smith. It was AMAZING; all 3 of them have such phenomenal voices. It was the best night to kick off the Christmas spirit for the month.

  

We had a mini Christmas photo session in a gorgeous barn. Really, my intent was for these to just be simple maternity pictures with the couch in the barn and the chandelier overhead, because I had already booked Christmas pictures with another photographer at a Christmas tree farm, BUT the barn happened to be decorated so pretty from a big Christmas party the night before and the other session at the Christmas tree farm was cancelled due to weather, so these turned into our Christmas pictures and the other session turned out be more of just a general family/maternity session... it all worked out great!

      

  


We've finally had some cold days, which means I've been cooking more and am so happy to use my new stove and oven (we got a new refrigerator, too, and I LOVE it)! We generally aren't big soup people... but the Pioneer Woman really knows what she's doing. I made her potato soup and it was glorious! The chicken soup I made on my own and it was probably the best chicken noodle I've ever had in my life. Tony loves when I make my own creations; he says the only problem is that it's always so good but we never get to have the same exact thing twice because I make it from scratch and I don't measure things out or write down how I made it! Haha! 

  

We had a fun day at a Christmas parade and then came home and put on Christmas music and decorated the house and put up the tree. BTW, E really did enjoy the parade. It was cold so he was bundled up... but he couldn't take his eyes off the candy that was being thrown on the ground! Haha. I think that concerned him a little bit! My belly is so big that I'm having a hard time zipping up my own coat! 

    

We had a little get away to Nashville. Then our house flooded. (That's another post.) 

Elliott was able to go to The Christmas Train with my family. Our tickets were for the day after we got back from Nashville so Tony and I were stuck in Norman taking care of stuff at the house, but E had a really great time! I woke up at 4:30am the day tickets went on sale and got tickets for everyone because I really wanted E to be able to experience it, especially since it's the last year. I know he won't remember it, but it's still a fun/special thing to do for families.  

We saw Santa!! He was actually really excited to see Santa, he just looked a little confused with the elves started ringing bells and yelling at him to smile for the picture! Haha! Elliott is older this year and has been so enamored with everything Christmas- Santa, the lights, the trees, the songs, the fun decorations (see pic below of the cute light-up snowman that he insisted he needed at Hobby Lobby... it has "snow" inside him and changes colors!), his baby Jesus and the toy nativity we have, and all the fun time we've had with family.

It's truly been a happy Christmas season!