Christmas 2012

We celebrated our first Christmas together as a threesome this year!  Here are a few of our highlights from the holiday season.

Rebekah caught her first glimpse of snow in Dallas.  We tried to get her to touch it, but she wasn't having that.  She preferred just to look out the window.

We decided to have a family Christmas celebration at home on Nathan's birthday rather than taking all of our gifts with us to open on our travels.  Fortunately, we clued Santa in our plan, so he was able to come visit.  That night, we took Rebekah into our bedroom where the Christmas tree was, and she crawled immediately over to her stocking and the few unwrapped books that Santa left for her.  It took a bit of coaxing to get her to actually look in her stocking, but she had lots of fun.

 It's the birthday boy!!!

 

We traveled to Kansas first to visit with Kristin's parents.  While there, Rebekah wouldn't let us get any sleep.  We're not sure what was up with that - whether she was teething, anxious about being in a new place, or just too excited.  However, with a lack of sleep apparently comes a lot of developmental milestones.  She started pulling up!

She got to visit with her great grandmother and really enjoyed herself.

We had a birthday celebration for Nathan (because one birthday celebration is never enough).  We couldn't find birthday candles, so we just stuck a match in a piece of pumpkin pie.

My sister and brother-in-law gave him an office survival kit that included M&Ms and a picture of Rebekah and I.  Awesome gift!

Christmas morning came bright and early once Rebekah woke us all up. 

 We took her into the living room where, once again, she crawled right over to her pile of gifts from Santa.

Whoa...a toothbrush! :)

...and a CD!  Santa is so cool!

After she finished opening up her "stocking", she helped Daddy open his.

SANTA IS AWESOME!!!

After breakfast, we opened the rest of the gifts.  We were fortunate to be able to skype with my sister and brother-in-law for the gift-opening.

Rebekah never really caught on to the unwrapping process.  We had to help her out quite a bit, but she did enjoy playing with the tissue paper.

And she enjoyed playing in the empty boxes.  After all, she's the best gift of the year!

Rebekah had a great first Christmas Day.  After the gifts, she played in an awesome tunnel...

...tasted snow...

...and enjoyed getting all bundled up just for the sake of getting bundled up!

After we left Kansas, we headed to Oklahoma to celebrate Christmas with Nathan's family.  Rebekah got sick with a stomach bug while we were there (and then spread it to Nathan and I once we got home to Texas), but that didn't stop her fun.  She and Nathan enjoyed going outside during a snowstorm to see the snow fall from the sky.

She slept through the first Christmas celebration, but her parents didn't!

 We had one last Christmas celebration at Nathan's grandmother's house.  It was fun to get together with all of the family - Rebekah loved them so much she decided to adopt her aunt, uncle, and cousins.

Her Papa Gary had a lot of fun with her, too. :)

A few other images from that day...

Right after we got back to Texas, the stomach bug made its last rounds through our house.  That didn't stop us from celebrating one more thing, though.  Rebekah turned 11 MONTHS OLD!

Happy holidays from our family to yours!

fall highlights

Well, winter is practically upon us!  Today, Rebekah saw her first snow.

We haven't been good about updating over the past few months because we've just been plain busy.  Nathan was in charge of a product launch at work and was putting in a few more hours to get that accomplished.  Praise - it was a success!  Kristin has been working hard to get as much done on her dissertation each day as possible.  She is absolutely determined to graduate in 2013.

Since we'll have lots to write about in December, we thought we'd do a picture recap of the past few months to get everything up to speed.

First, Miss Rebekah turned 8 months old in October. 

That month, she also learned to clap!  She practiced her new skill all the time, even when she was crying.

She finally discovered her headbands and decided she wanted nothing to do with them.  So, now that she won't wear a bow, we get congratulated on our "cute little boy" at least once a week.

She also learned how to read....just kidding!  She does love books, though.

For Halloween, we continued our annual tradition of pumpkin carving.  This year, Nathan designed a real winner - it's Goofy! :)

Nathan dressed up as William Wallace (aka. Braveheart) in an attempt to win a costume contest at work.  He wore his kilt, my Moby baby-wearing wrap, and designed his sword and shield from our old fence.  He ended up winning third place!

Our little Pebbles also dressed up!

Kristin...well...she just dressed like a mom.

In November, Rebekah turned 9 months old.  This was a big month for her!

She joined her dad for some X-box time and even got her own controller.

Thanksgiving Day was lovely.  We were in Oklahoma visiting with Nathan's family, and Rebekah enjoyed playing with all of her cousins.  It was the first time she was actually old enough to interact with them.  Most of all, Rebekah loved eating.  Over Thanksgiving weekend, she learned to eat "real" food - she had macaroni and cheese, turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie, chicken strips, French fries, and a hot roll.  We, in turn, got to change out lots of interesting diapers.

She interacted with her first dog over Thanksgiving weekend.  She crawled up and pulled his ear.  He handled that well enough that she was able to sit on his back and "ride" him for a few seconds.

She also learned to sit up from a crawling position, to begin pulling up on furniture, and to destroy everything in sight.

Our little adventurer loves growling at her toys and climbing over any obstacle course Nathan happens to set up.

Because she now gets into everything, we ended up setting up our Christmas tree in our bedroom where she can't get to it.  We take her in for "visitation" about once a day, but otherwise it's ours to enjoy.

We're excited about celebrating our first Christmas as a threesome.  We utilized the Christmas decorations at church to take some pictures on her 10 month birthday.  She made everyone smile with her Mickey Santa hat!