When's the last time you were THIS excited about Christmas?

As a fairly new parent, I'm discovering that having kids makes Christmas a lot of fun. Sawyer isn't old enough to really get it yet, but he definitely senses the excitement of the season. Every morning when we go downstairs he runs over to the Christmas tree and says "Tee! Tee!" and makes the sign for "tree". We're teaching him that Santa Claus says "Ho, ho, ho" and he'll repeat it in a deep voice with a serious look on his face. My parents and sisters are coming to visit from Utah on the 20th and my brother's coming up from Miami, so our whole family will be together for Christmas this year. I can't wait to see them all and to see Sawyer and Caroline on Christmas morning. I remember the first year that Christmas wasn't that exciting to me; that morning I realized that I would rather sleep in than go downstairs and open presents. Since then the season has become more spiritually significant to me and I enjoy the peace and togetherness that comes with it. But seeing it through Sawyer's eyes brings back some of that excitement it used to hold for me.

Thanksgiving

I'm behind in my blogging what with Christmas preparations and whatnot, but in November we did celebrate Thanksgiving. We went to Corolla, NC to spend the holiday weekend with Eric's family at their beach house. The day before we went there was a huge storm and all the roads were flooded. On the way there we thought we were going to have to get out of the car and kayak to the house. The picture is of their driveway and the road. When we arrived I joked with my mother-in-law that their house was probably more valuable now that it was waterfront property; that went over like a ton of bricks. I guess I wouldn't have a sense of humor about it either if it was my place that was close to being flooded. At any rate, we had a nice weekend just hanging out and eating lots of good food.