A Very Merry (Late) Blog Post

Yes, yes, it's February, and we're just doing our Christmas blog post.  It's been a busy few months!  In addition to the holiday merriment, Tracy spent most of December getting ready to change jobs, Clay spent all of December helping clients navigate fiscal cliff fears, and the kids just hopped from party to party!

We know you're here for the pictures of the kids, so we'll go light on the text and give you lots of the good stuff.

Santa Sam delivering holiday goodies to our neighbors

From McCully Christmas at Chip & Phy's house:

Sam enjoying the McCully tradition of smashing a gingerbread house

 Who needs presents?  Sam just needs sticker books

Ahh, Mater.

Caroline sporting her new ear warmer and getting into some mischief as usual

Getting up early for their Christmas celebration at Chip & Phy's

And then we were off to NC!  We spent Christmas Eve-Eve at the Cabin with the Crockers...

Sam's favorite holiday tradition: riding on the Gator with Papa!

Caroline's favorite too :)

Caroline and Nana enjoying some Gator time too...

Enjoying some cousin time...

We don't have any pictures of our delicious and beautiful Christmas Eve dinner, but we did make sure to capture the cookies-for-Santa moment!

 Just a few (ha!) shots of the kiddos on Christmas morning:

And a few from Strickland Christmas at Aunt Tricia's.  Kudos to Uncle David for getting a picture of (almost) all the cousins looking in the same direction!

 And a few post-Christmas shots...Caroline trying on the Tinkerbell costume Sam picked out for her...

And Sam with the "present" he made for Clay.  That is a book, wrapped in wrapping paper with about 200 stickers piled on top of each other on top.  It just may be the best present ever.

This sparsely-worded (and sparsely-pictured, but for the kiddos) post does no justice to the many, many celebrations we had with friends and family.  It was such an amazingly special Christmas (there really is nothing better on earth than holidays with little kids).  As it has been for three years running now, our new year's resolution is to post more often.  Let's see if we can stick to it this time!

Happy Halloween!

We are so far behind on our blog posts!  If I waited until I had time to catch up, I don't think I'd ever post again...so I'm just skipping ahead to today.  HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  

Sam has been so excited about Halloween that you'd think it was Christmas.  He has been counting down the days and just couldn't wait to wear his Pirate Captain costume to school today.  Caroline doesn't yet understand the Halloween concept, but she definitely loved being Little Red Riding Hood all day!

I went to school for their Halloween party, and they had the cutest little trick-or-treating parade around the school.  Sam was SO PROUD of his costume the whole time, and he is thrilled about all the treats he collected!

After school, we gathered with the Haleys for some trick-or-treating!  

Sam and Liza led the charge all over the neighborhood, and Caroline was a step behind them the whole way.  We trick or treated early last year, but this year we stayed out a little later, and it was so much fun to see the streets full of adorable little kids in their costumes. 

 After dinner and a few more treats than I probably should have let them have (What can I say?  I was having too much fun enjoying Halloween with them to ration the candy too severely), they both fell fast asleep.

After watching them soak up the excitement and joy of Halloween, I am so excited to head into the holiday season.  Everything -- especially holidays - are so much more fun through the eyes of these happy kiddos.