The Holidays Arrive

My favorite time of year is here. I love the month of December. I love listening to Christmas music, decorating the house, making cookies, all the wonderful family things that go on as we look towards Jesus birth. It's an awesome time of year. As we celebrate Christmas this year, it is definitely with a new twist. Elijah has taught us a lot over the past four weeks, the main thing being that we can and do survive with a whole lot less sleep than we used to.

As everyone who has seen pictures of him would testify, he sure is a cute bugger when he's sleeping. However, he's not always cute. He does have his crying bouts, but what baby doesn't. He went in for a checkup yesterday, and has gained almost a whole pound over the two weeks. He's obviously getting plenty to eat.

The past few weeks have been really hectic around here. Not only are we changing to accommodate a new baby, but my whole family came down to visit for Thanksgiving. In total, that would include 19 people. My parents came the Monday before Thanksgiving to get a little "Elijah time" before the masses arrived. We had a fantastic time throughout the whole weekend. While the weather wasn't quite as warm as they all hoped it would be, it was beautiful none-the-less. We played a little football on Thanksgiving, shot some clay pigeons on Friday, and went horseback riding on Saturday. Overall, a great couple of days. One thing that was definitely not lacking was food. As Rice and Tucker tradition would have it, we managed to eat our way through the weekend. Unfortunately, they didn't get to experience catfish, so they'll have to come down again soon.

We have three weeks of school left before Christmas break. I'm not really counting because I know it'll go really fast. After missing the first month of school, I'm really not all that excited to get it over with. The Christmas break will find us in Arkansas for the majority of it. We may do a bit of exploring with Elijah, we'll have to see what he thinks of road trips.

Anywho, enjoy some pictures from the past couple of weeks, and we'll be sure to update again soon with Christmas decorations and pictures of interesting holiday outfits (for a preview of what's to come check out Eli's new reindeer outfit compliments of his U.P. family).