It's the most wonderful time of the year

We had such a great Christmas this year! Tim's mom, brother Todd and Todd's girlfriend were able to come up this year. It was a full house with 7 of us in a 2 bedroom apartment, but we had a blast!

Here are some, and by some I mean a TON, of pictures:

Christmas Eve at church

Brooke and her besties

Nana with her grandbabies

My handsome and happy baby boy!

Love them!

Christmas Eve present

Christmas jammies

reading the Christmas story

Brooke has been loving Toy Story so we got her a Jessie doll.

She LOVES her!

Brayden got a bumbo! I love his funny expressions!

He will hate me for this later!

We sang happy birthday to Jesus at my parents

Brayden's first Christmas

same pictures...

Since my kids were both born in September, doing things with Brayden at 3 months reminds me of things we did with Brooke when she the same age. I went back to look at some pictures of some of our traditions we do every year and found these 2.

This first one is from our annual trip to San Francisco. We always take a sister picture. The top one is from 2 years ago with Brooke and the bottom one was this past Sunday with Brayden.

This one was taken where Leah has her Choir's Christmas concert each year.
I didn't even remember that I took this picture with Brooke until I saw that tree...it's hard to miss!

This is what happened when I tried to take a picture with both of them!

Merriment on Main

Every year Vacaville has their annual Christmas Tree lighting which is called Merriment on Main. We used to go every year when I was growing up, and for 15+ years my dad led the singing. I have been back in Vacaville now for 5 years, and I had never taken Tim until we went last year when we had started at Crossroads. This year, since Brayden was 2 1/2 months old, we were Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus. It was fun to be a part of the Nativity scene while the kids choir and adult choir were singing some beautiful Christmas music!

Brooke hung out with my mom and Michael (who obviously did not want to take this picture) while we were up on the stage

Brooke and daddy getting ready to share a burrito

Thankful

We had a great Thanksgiving this year and had so much fun celebrating as a family during the day then spending time with my family and some friends that night. I am so thankful for the blessings God has given me.

some of my blessings:

Another thing I am thankful for happened this past week as well. Once a year I get together with 7 of my closest girlfriends from college. I usually only get to see them once a year because I live so far from them . So you can imagine my excitement when I got to see 2 of them this week!!! Amy, Chris and Logan came up last week and we were able to have dinner with them and the Eckles. It was so fun to sit together and talk and watch our babies play together! I love that Chris (who I have known since I was 12) married one of my favorite people!

Then, later that week we headed out to Napa to see Sarah, Max, Jacob, Kennedy and the cute little baby bump! I loved our time together, eating and catching up, talking about the newest addition that has recently joined us and the one that is coming soon. We watched our kids be a little crazy and play in the restaurant (thankfully we were the only ones in there most of the time).

I am so thankful I got to see these girls and their precious families! Can't wait until our next girls weekend!!