A little of a lot

Where to begin... I've neglected my blog these days. It hasn't been THAT long (three weeks) since I've posted, but so much has happened that it feels like a lot longer. It seems like old news to talk about, but I haven't posted since before Thanksgiving, so I better start there. We were invited over to a friend's house for Thanksgiving which was really nice so we didn't have to cook everything from scratch just for the four eaters of our family. We spent pretty much the whole day there, just relaxing and eating. Thanks Browns for a great time!

The first weekend in December, "Grampy" and "Yia Yia" came to visit. They only came for a long weekend (Thursday afternoon through Tuesday morning), but we had a great time. (Thanks guys for all your help and company!) We visited the Children's Museum...

... attending a Sugar Land Town Square Concert and our church Christmas party...

...and just hung out around the house, watched a few movies, and my Dad helped with regrouting part of our shower.

It was actually really nice that they came when they did. I had a ton of work to get done with the magazine and they were great with the kids while I finished the editing work I needed to do for the next issue.

For one assignment I had to go to the Museum of Natural Science. While I was looking around for other "subjects" I took this picture of Elia cozying up to a giant alligator skull. When she's in the mood, she really poses for the camera. I prefer to catch her naturally, but at least she was cooperating instead of running away like she sometimes does :)

In other news, for our second year in a row, it snowed in Texas. It was funny because my dad came from New Hampshire (where there was no snow) and it snowed while he was here!

Of course, we've also done the "Santa" thing. I think these pictures were from our fourth "Santa sighting". Ethan especially is just so wide-eyed about Santa. It's fun to see their excitementAlso on my list of things to do was to get a nice picture of the kids. I told Eric I wanted to take an updated family picture, but then decided I would just get one of the kids for a Christmas card (which I haven't had time to do yet):(... and may not get to in time for Christmas... so don't feel bad if you don't get one. Eric was awesome! On the morning of said pictures, I had picked out the kids' clothes, gotten everyone dressed and hair done and it was drizzling! Since it is such a production to get everyone ready, we still went a head and took pictures. Eric is always so good at getting the kids to smile that I knew I needed him with me. It was a short ordeal, but I was happy with the final picture of our little cuties: I took a few extra pictures yesterday after one of my photo shoots. You never know what expression Ethan is going to pull, which is why that last picture is just so indicative of his personality.

Our little Kara... always smiling! She's rolling over now and we've stopped swaddling her. It's fun to see her reaching for things and moving all over the floor. At her four month check up the doctor said she is exactly in the 50th percentile for weight and height.

So, that's it for now. We leave for Utah on Thursday. I can't believe the break is almost here. I'm rushing to get everything done that I need to do before I leave. I love to think about relaxing when I get to Utah, but I've already planned to take my whole backup of my computer hard drive and sort through it. Vacation? What's that!? Merry Christmas to everyone!