Memory Lane

Ok one more Christmas Post.  Check out what the power of the interwebs can do... I can find on this blog (or on the photoblog before I had this blog) a photograph from every Christmas Morning Matt and I have had together as a married couple.  Check it out:

2004:

Just married in our uber chic downtown apartment at the Bingham with our sad little Charlie Brown tree.  We had so few ornaments it was pathetic.  I did buy the red garland to match the window frames, though.

2005:

First Christmas in our own house and the first one with Dexter.  He looks so young! Although then again so do we.... And by "young" I pretty much mean "thin"

2006:

No big changes in this one (except the wall color in the background).  We pretty much spent that year "renovating" our house and partying. (have since learned that painting does not = renovating.  Unless you have plaster dust in your entire world and have exposed bare studs it's just "decorating")  I think that year we gave each other ridiculous things like ipods and diamonds.  Oh how things have changed.

2007:

Serious camera improvement from 2006 to 2007... That would be the year we bought our digital SLR for our trip to Peru.  Although clearly I did not spring for a new robe...

2008:

No Tree, No Gifts, 7 months pregnant.  Bah Humbugh.  Matt's sweater is pretty stylin' though!

2009:

BABY!!! Oh and hey I finally got a new robe! (although if we're being honest the old one is still in rotation) Dexter's starting to look like an old man, though.

Well that was fun.  I'll have to make sure I do this again in another 6 Christmases!

Holiday Wrap Up

So today is Epiphany. As in the last day of the Holiday Season. As in the last day you can have holiday decorations up without being it just being sad. (note: we still have all of our decorations up and they aren’t coming down until this weekend) So I thought I’d finally get around to posting all of the fun things that happened over the holiday drinking season before it was too late. How about a list?

1.) We took the baby to see Santa:

She wasn’t scared at all. More like fascinated. Kept looking at him and then looking at me like “hey mom! Check out this dude. Not sure what’s going on with him but maybe I can figure it out.” Her posse came with her too:

2.) We got a Christmas tree. Last year we were so devoid of holiday spirit that we didn’t even mess around with a tree. In all fairness we had other shit going on but still… it was nice to decorate this time.

Helping us pick out the perfect one

Helping us decorate

Wow man. Wow.

3.) We continued our holiday tradition of cookie day – this time the baby played along, too although she was very distracting and totally didn't pull her weight.

4.) We had a fun Christmas Eve at my parents’ house – and the baby LOVED opening all of the presents:

And the dogs got their annual frostypaws treats:

He's not rabid.  It's peanut butter flavored.

5.) Although Santa didn’t bring her teeth like I kept telling her he would we still had a wonderful Christmas morning together. We even took our annual picture… although this year it was a bit trickier than last year:

There we go.

And yes, Matt is wearing a Destination Yarn shirt. My parents had a bunch of them made as Christmas presents. Good advertising!

6.) I met my best girlfriends for lunch in Columbus – of which sadly I have no pictures. And of course I stopped at Knitters Mercantile on the way home.  Of course I did.

7.) Also pictureless – Matt’s brother and his fiancée came to town. And we spent 4 hours in a bar with a baby watching the Steelers game. It was funtimes, indeed.

8.) We did a white elephant gift exchange with my cousins – and I got a Bumpit:

Go big or go home... with your hair?

9.) Matt took 2 days off and we spent most of it together doing this:

Or this:

It was awesomely relaxing.

9.) We said goodbye to the most challenging year we’ve ever faced. Literally everything in our lives has been turned upside down this year. Our house, my career, our family unit. All of it. And while all of these changes have been good ones that much change in that short of a time of that many things takes its toll. 2009 is going to be one of those years that I look back on and think Wow. I can’t believe we did all of that. We must have been insane.

10.) We welcomed in 2010 in (un)lame style. Some of our friends had a party but we have a baby so that wasn’t really possible for us. Instead Andy, Carolyn, Jill, and Matt came over and hung out with us so we wouldn’t be alone on NYE. It was a very chill night with way too much food and champagne. Perfect.

I think that’s about all of it! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and all of the gifts you gave/received were as well received as Dexter’s Christmas present:

Dog in a snuggy. Aaaawh yeah.

The Final Card

Just a quick fly by post to show off our final Christmas Card:

Totally the most adorable of the shoot. 

I also posted just in time to play along with this:

which is going on over at a A Mom Two Boys

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of my wonderful blog friends!  Thanks so much for being here this year through all of the sporadic posting and life changes!!!

Christmas Card Preview

So after doing something spectacular (and time consuming) for our Christmas card last year this year we decided to punt. Picture of the baby, premade card picked from a website, aaaaaand done. Besides, we figured, if we sent out anything other than a picture of the kid people would be all “Whaaaa? Where’s the baby? That is some crap.”

Should be easy, right?

So I set up my whole ghetto lightbox that I usually use for photographing yarn (did a big shop update today, btw), put the baby in something holiday and adorable and figured we’d be done in no time.

Silly, mommy.

Uh huh.  Almost 9 month olds are a lot wigglier then yarn.

Wheeeeee!

My first mistake was to put her in shoes she’d never seen before.

Hmmm what are those?

I wonder if I could put them in my mouth.

They are so awesome.

I understand that you are telling me not to do this but I really don’t care.

So then I tried leaning her back like a tiny baby for just a head shot.

Why would you do that to me! I was playing with the shoes!

Yeah that was a FAIL.

Not cool, mommy. Hey what’s this.

Ooooh this is fun to play with!

Mmmmmm… I’m going to tear apart your set now.

Look at those things!

Finally I brought in the big guns. I called Dexter into the room.

Hey it’s my doggie!

I go get him now.

Well, shit. So then I tried making her do some “So Big’s” thinking it would get her focused on me and I’d grab a shot inbetween the flailing arms.

So Big!

I said Soooo Big!

Soooo Big?

Well from there she got into the posing and made me wonder if perhaps we had watched a bit too many ANTM marathons in those early, sleep deprived weeks.

I’m fierce.

Am I Smizing?

Benny Ninja taught me this pose himself.

The whole operation wasn’t a total failure, though.

Sure about that, Mommy?

I did manage to get some cute shots where she didn’t look like a crazy baby.

I’m not crazy baby.

Not crazy at all.

I’m not going to post the final Christmas card shot just yet since that would spoil the surprise. But I will tell you that it’s even cuter than this one:

How can it be cuter? This is pretty stinking cute.

Merry Christmas!!!