Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas Hunny!!

We love you Mommy and enjoy your relaxing trip with the girls.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Christmas at the Garner's

Today was our Christmas celebration with the Garners'. We had such a great time hanging out with family. It is always a lively (and loud) event when you get us all together. I think with every addition it gets more and more exciting! Santa even stopped by for a visit this year. The kids were all able to sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Abby just seemed to want to stuff her hand in her mouth, maybe it is sign language for food... who knows. She seemed to like him. Maybe she thought his outfit was familiar. She kind of was a mini female version of him today. She was really cute as always =) I am not partial or anything!


This was Abby's Christmas outfit!

Just like her mommy, she is so into her shoes!

Abby meets Santa and loves him!

Abigial got a lot of fun books and toys for Christmas. She didn't quite know what to do. Just wait till next year!

The kids got a Wii =)

The Twinkies - Elsa and Abby got the same Christmas outfit...Elsa gave Abby a nice slobbery kiss. It was cute!

Here are all the kids with Santa - It was as organized as we could all get =)

Monday, December 15, 2008

Jingle All The Way - 10K

So I did my first 10K yesterday. I am just glad that I finished it =) I went with a couple of people from work. It was a really nice day for a walk in downtown dc. It was of course freezing in the morning but once you got going I had to start taking off layers. Today I am sore because some of the muscles that were used during the race yesterday had not been used in a while (pretty much pre-Abby) But it felt good getting outside and doing some exercising. I mainly walked/jogged with Alicyn and we both finished the race together at 1hr and 31min. Which is a little less that 15 minutes per mile. Next year I will be able to bring Abby along for the run and hopefully improve the time =)


Alicyn, Me, and Laura after the race - Sorry it is a little on the dark side, it came from the camera phone =)

She found her toes!

Abigail found her feet and she is fascinated with grabbing them. We have a little video, I just have to figure out how to get it onto the computer =) She has actually begun grabbing and playing with a lot of little toys and holding on to stuff like a big girl. Ma-moo came over last night and she had a faux fur coat on and Abby would just pet it! It was hillarious. =)


"Look at my foot mommy!"

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Cotinued Prayer Request-Updated

It is with great sadness that we have lost a very special person in our family. Grandma Kleaver passed away on Friday evening. She is with her husband again and we know she is in a better place. We will dearly miss her.


My Grandma Kleaver is still in the hospital recovering from medical procedures from a few weeks ago. Her condition is improving, it will just take a good amount of time for her to be back to her old self again.

She is possibly having another procedure this Friday and if you could continue to keep her in your thoughts and prayers we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you all so much for your continued prayers for her and my family.

Abby's Dedication!


Sorry for the lateness, we just have had busy nights this week and we forgot to add a blog about Abby's dedication to the church this past Sunday.

It was a true blessing for Christina and I to dedicate Abby to the Lord, it meant so much to us. It was a great message that our pastor gave about Abby and the meaning behind the dedication. Mama and Steve made the trip for this special event and all of my immediate family as well. It was so great to have all of them there for this special event. We know a lot of our friends and family members could not make the service bc of travel, but we both know you all were praying for her and us this past weekend, and we thank you so much for that.

I was ordained as a Deacon for our church during the same service and it was very humbling to have so many people pray over Christina and myself. I know we both will be working extremely hard to represent our church and God to our community and friends. It truly feels like a giant family every Sunday when we go to DBC.

At the afterparty for Abby we had a lot of our church family and others that attended the service over at our house for some good grub. Christina's Dad made delicious ribs, and superb sliders. Mama made deserts that always won over peoples tummys. Christina made her Porky Award Winning Tina's Weenas. My mom made her famous potato salad and pasta salad. As for Abby and myself, we ATE.

Thank you again to everyone that attend Abby service and for all that thought and prayed for our family, we love you all so very much.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Rubbing her head...

So Abby is fascinated with rubbing her head! She rubs it when she is tired, when she is eating, when she is just playing on the floor. It is really cute when she does it. She looks so perplexed like she is thinking about something or is concerned. She is such a serious little baby it just makes you laugh =)


Here she is with Ma-moo.


Just relaxing for her nap.

Decorating!

So the weekend after thanksgiving, Joe got all of the boxes of christmas stuff out of the basement and we put up the tree and decorated the house! We of course did our tradition and watched Elf (with Will Ferrel). Abby was all into the tree. I think she was mesmerized by the lights and the pretty ornaments. She wore her Elf in training sleeper that Aunt Jennifer got for her. She is about to outgrow it so it is good that Christmas is right around the corner! Joe and his dad spent from 10am -5pm on the lights that went on the outside of the house. They of course did a great job as always. This year the new addition to the outside was they lit the wreaths and they added music to the unveiling =) Each year I guess we are going to add one thing on the outside. I just hope 10 years from now our house can't be seen from space =)


Here is her Elf outfit, I also found slippers =) Sometimes it is hard to resist the torture of dress up!


Here she is with a big smile, she is so excited to help with Christmas Decorations!!


Abby with her cousins Savannah and Logan! They were so excited to hang out with her and she was just chillin =)


This is Abby's reaction to her daddy and pop-pop's work on the outside of the house, she is saying, "what next...Santa on the roof?" =)


The final outcome of all of that work! Good job dad and pop-pop!

Thanksgiving

This year Joe and I definitely have A LOT to be thankful for. We have an amazing baby girl, who has brought us more joy than we ever thought imaginable! We have a wonderful family that is so supportive and loving! We have a great church family that encourages us and strengthens our relationship with God. It has definitely been a busy year (in a good way) and we wouldn't change a thing about it!

On Sunday our pastor gave a message on thanksgiving and he pointed out that many times when we give our thanks it is on the material things, we are thankful for our house and for our cars and for food in our bellys, but that many times we forget to be thankful for the people that we have in our lives and for the relationships we are able to develop. And that many times when people are looking back on life they always say, I wish I had said that or I wish I had spent more time with X, etc. So during the sermon he gave the floor to the congregation to say thank you to the people who have meant the most in their lives. It was so amazing to hear the stories and hear the sincerity and almost a relief from people who finally got to say what they had been thinking. Sometimes we get so caught up in the day to day life and the materialism gets to us that we forget about what really matters. I appreciated the wake up call. It has definitely put things into perspective for me.

The below is the turkey cake I made for thanksgiving. Abby helped with the hand portion =)


Always playing catch up

One of these days I will have time to do all of the things that I want to do, but for now it will just have to be sporatic =) We have quite of few things to catch up on, so there is going to be multiple posts! We have a couple of videos of where Abby is now, she seems to be quite the talker!



The next video is her tummy time. She practices quite a bit at daycare with Mrs. Stephanie. I am so thankful we found a great daycare to take Abby to, it has made going back to work a much easier thing to do!