Caroline

Last week I watched my nephew and niece, Jackson and Caroline, while Courtney had a doctor's appointment. I got Caroline laughing and had to video it because her laugh is so funny! (Sorry that my phone is ringing in the background)

Florida for New Year's

David and I spent New Year's in Florida with his dad, step-mom, grandparents, and sister's family. I had never been to Florida so I was very excited. We had such a wonderful time with David's family and enjoyed just being able to relax for the first time in a long while. We also did some fun things while we were there.

One day we went to the beach. Jackson absolutely loved the water...and being naked!

Here's Caroline, my newest niece, out on the beach with her grandad. She was pretty happy too even though she had a cold the whole time we were in Florida.

The beach we went to was neat because you could drive your cars right up onto the beach! Here's a picture of our three-car caravan!

Me and David's feet...together forever! :)

David also has some other family that lives in Florida so one night we went to visit them. I had never met them so I had a nice time meeting and talking with them. David's step-mom, Diane, brought over her enormous dogs. I tried to take some pictures to show you how gigantic they are. No wonder Jackson calls them cows!

Yes, they really are that big (for an even better scale notice Jackson underneith his belly!)

I don't really like dogs...especially when they're bigger than me!


Caroline riding on the "cow"

Our last morning in Florida we went for a boat tour around some of the nearby lakes. Caroline loved wearing her own life jacket...
and eating it too!!!

The following video is us going through a canal on our boat tour. The video is sideways. sorry!



After the boat tour we went to Downtown Disney which lies just outside of Disneyworld and consists of shops and restaurants. We mainly just walked around but I was glad I got to experience at least a small part of Florida Disney.


Inside Downtown Disney is a huge section just devoted to legos. Here are some pictures of the amazing things people had made completely out of legos!

(Yes, this dragon really is made of legos and really is in the water!)

I took this picture for my dad because every time my family goes to New York my dad always asks us if we can see King Kong on top of the Empire State Building.

We all went to dinner before we left for home. (Courtney's husband Cameron didn't fit in the picture...sorry!).

The restaurant we went to was a pizza place and their seating was named after baseball teams. As luck would have it, they made us sit at the Red Sox table! I was horrified!



And, fittingly, the Red Sox table sits right across from the (far superior) Yankee table.

As we were eating, we suddenly realized that Jackson had become very quiet while eating his pizza. We found him asleep with a piece of pizza still in his hand. So adorable!

Monkey

For any of you who haven't met my favorite stuffed animal, he's a monkey and his name is Monkey (pretty creative, I know). Monkey is a pretty experienced traveler because me and my good friend Rachel take Monkey whenever we go on vacations. So far, Monkey has been to Honduras, Washington D.C., all over California, Brasil, Utah, and North Carolina. He's pretty excited to be going to Florida for New Year's (and so am I!!!).

Can you see Monkey hanging in the tree?

I thought that it would be fun to dress Monkey up for all the holidays. Here's a picture of him in his Christmas hat!

Picky!

Although my husband has gotten a lot better at eating different kinds of food, he still is a little picky when it comes to vegetables. The other day we got Chinese food and the restaurant forgot to take the vegetables out of the rice. I later caught David sitting by the trash can picking out every vegetable from the rice. I just had to take a picture!!!

Luminaries or Luminaros?

My family always called them luminaros. I found out when I moved to North Carolina that they are actually called luminaries. But, who cares, I still call them luminaros and at least my family knows what I'm talking about!

Anyway, onto what I really am posting about. For those of you who don't know, David and I basically live in a huge arboretum (AKA a really nice park). It is a wonderful place to live because we can walk down to the park anytime we want! It is also neat because every once in a while the city will sponsor activities at the park. The other night they lit up over 6,000 luminaros throughout the arboretum. David and I walked down so we could see them. It was so neat!!!

They also had a Scottish bagpipe band come and play. They were really fun to listen to. One of the band members brought his son along who wore his own little kilt over his jeans. He was so cute!


We got to the park right as the bagpipers were finishing. They ended the concert with the Scottish folksong that we now use as the tune to "Praise to the Man". It was so cool to listen to them play that song. David especially loved it! Here's a little bit of them playing that song.

Family Pictures

Over Thanksgiving we decided to take some pictures of our small family. Here's how they turned out.

Surprise! We have a two-year old already!!!! Just kidding! Jackson just really wanted to be in the picture with us. Here are the real pictures (Thanks for taking them Courtney!).

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

My finals are finally over and that means I have a little time to post some pictures. A couple of weeks ago, David and I went to get a Christmas Tree for Family Home Evening. It wasn't our first Christmas tree together because David surprised me with a Christmas tree last year while we were dating. However, it still was a first because, as we got ready to leave, I realized that, although my family has always bought a real Christmas tree, I had never gone with them to pick it out. David couldn't believe I had never picked out a Christmas tree, but that just made it all the more fun.

We first stopped to get some hot chocolate because it was so cold and then we went to the lot that David has been going to since he was little. It was so fun to hear him talk about his memories of picking out a Christmas tree. We looked and looked and soon found the perfect one. Since we live in an older apartment, our ceilings are tall. So, we ended up with an eight foot Christmas tree!

We came home and began to decorate until we realized that we only had two strings of lights. So, at 11:30 at night we headed off to Santa's workshop (AKA Walmart). We bought some more lights and David had to have tinsel so we bought that too (it made me think of my dad because he always loves to have tinsel on the tree). We got home, put on some Beatles music (this is a tradition of my dad and I to listen to Beatles' music while we decorate the tree), and decorated most of the tree. We finished it off the next night. All in all, it was so fun to take some time away from studying to do something for Christmas!

David was a little tired that night!