Malana & Erik's Engagement!!

The best gift I received this Christmas was to get to be part of my sister's engagement night. What a happy moment to witness. I appreciate that Erik was willing to include us on this fun surprise by the Reedy River Falls bridge. And aren't the votive candles fun!! Just wanted to share my excitement as I rejoice that she has found "the one" and is so very happy!!

Christmas Highlights

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!! We enjoyed visits from both sides of the family this year. Abby understood much more about what presents were and kept saying "present me" to anyone who would listen. Our friends the Hatten family invited us to to their Christmas Eve service where they portrayed the holy family this year....and don't they look the part!! And right after the service we drove around and looked at lights before taking my sister to her surprise engagement (which I will do a separate post for). I am so thankful that Jesus was born! And that he was born to die for me and you. Reflecting on that has been such a great part of all this holiday hoopla. I enjoyed watching "The Nativity" a few days beforehand which is a great portrayal of our Savior's birth and the culture he entered. Anyway, great family time and great reflection time sums it up...and of course seeing Christmas through Abby's young eyes is quite a bonus!

Train ride with playgroup

Wednesday night we had a very fun playgroup outing to the "Polar Express" train at Simpsonville's Heritage Park. Erica and Caleb couldn't make it...we missed them, but we did have fun!! Santa even rode in on the train and Abby got to "meet" him. I'll have a picture of that sometime soon since Logan captured that "joyful" experience on camera for me!! It was pretty chilly out and we enjoyed some fake snow, hot cocoa, and cookies and rode the train twice.

79 degrees in December!!

We are loving the warm weather we've been having, but ready for coldness so it feels more like Christmas time. We took advantage of the nice weather yesterday morning and went to a couple parks around town...and went again in the afternoon! Abby is much braver on slides now. The slide in the video is the one she had the most trouble with...every time she went down she did a split, but seemed to have fun!

Fun weekend

Even though it was a busy call weekend for Stephen, we had lots of fun during the down time. A mini-reunion with some of our PC friends on Friday night. Downtown carousel rides, dinner, and "A Journey to the Manger" with the Roemmich family on Saturday night. Abby has enjoyed playing in the leaves recently. She loves to hide her feet and then try to jump out of the leaves. The FREE carousel ride downtown was a big hit...she was very disappointed to leave and kept saying "see horseys" the rest of the night.

Monkeying Around

Finally I figured out how to post video on this blog! A few issues with the browser on the Mac, but now I've got the hang of it.

Here's a recent zoo trip where the monkeys were putting on a show and Abby was either laughing really hard or trying to imitate them...you decide!

Headless wiseman and other Abby moments

Well we had our 1st Christmas blooper...went ahead and got it out of the way. We are letting Abby play with this seemingly non-breakable nativity set. Well today she brought me a wiseman's head and some myrrh. Oh well...time to go buy some super glue. All day she's been saying, "oh no, broke wiseman, i sorry." At least she's remorseful. She has learned the names of the figurines and I love how she says baby Jesus. Angels comes out as "anals" which we need to work on!! I love that she is talking so much though!

She has enjoyed having tea parties with the 2 feet tall snowman a friend made me several years ago.




And Elmo has enjoyed having quite a mouthful of her snacks!

Greenville's Downtown Parade

Tonight was the Christmas parade downtown. We forgot to go last year because it snuck up so fast on us. This year I was prepared. We went with the Anderson family and had fun watching the kids faces when they saw the marching bands, the dogs, the horses (see below for the pic of the largest horse any of us had ever seen!), and even a camel and a llama....yes, nothing gets me in the holiday spirit quite like a llama, how about you? Abby enjoyed seeing the Chick-fil-a cow to which she exclaimed, "Oh my goodness!" I loved hearing all the Christmas tunes. The parade got me in a festive mood to decorate our tree....which may or may not come crashing down any minute. It's a little on the crooked and wobbly side for some reason?

Frazier Fir 07

1st day of December and to kick off the festive, fun month we went and picked out our tree today. The past few years we have gotten our tree at the local farmer's market. This same old man gets them from Cashiers, NC. He's really sweet and it's a good deal. Abby had fun running around "helping" pick one out. So here's the one and then here it is decorated....just finished at 10:30pm...took me a lot longer than I expected and now I'm ready for bed. Worth it though...beautiful and yummy smelling!!! Maybe next year we'll venture out and cut one down somewhere like some of our friends were doing this year. I love Christmas!

More zoo fun!

Last week we made it back to the Greenville Zoo with friends Ethan and the other Abby. We heard the giraffes had arrived...and they have, but I didn't get a good picture because you still can't get close up yet. The youngins had fun times with the fake bear and the possibly fake (or dead) alligator??? The last pic is Abby's face while watching the apes going ape wild. I have a great video of it, but haven't been able to get it to link correctly...maybe later.