Christmas Letter

I'm posting this here, mostly for my benefit as I look back on the past...Here's our 2010 Christmas card pictures and letter...

Merry Christmas

    Merry Christmas! We hope your family has had a wonderful 2010. Our year has been BUSY! Chasing two toddlers has kept us on our toes, filled the house with endless noise, and brought tons of priceless moments! It has been fun to see Josh and Brielle start to really play together this year.  Thankfully, they get along pretty well most of the time.

    Joshua (3) has fully mastered talking and is very inquisitive! He loves to talk on the phone and is good to always ask the other person, “What are you doing today?” Josh enjoys trains, trucks, and playing outside, especially at the beach! 

    Brielle (almost 2) is talking, running, singing, and dancing right alongside her big brother. She has the sweetest voice and delights in saying “Hi” repeatedly to people. She is starting to get into dress-up and baby dolls, but also likes to push her dump truck around and can hold her own with the “big” kids! 

    Daniel and I have kept busy with the essentials – work, kids, house, an occasional date…and this year, football! We had season tickets for Florida State football this fall and enjoyed a great season cheering on the Seminoles!  Last, but not least, we are excited to welcome another baby girl to our family in May!  Check out our blog for the latest family updates and pictures--http://danvanadventure.blogspot.com.

May God bless you richly in 2011!

Feliz Navidad

We have had a lot of holiday action already this year and it's only December 19th. We celebrated Christmas with Daniel's immediate family on Dec 11th. It was a full weekend with Christmas dinner on Friday night, Janelle's FSU graduation on Saturday morning, our kids first trip to Lake Ella, and Christmas on Saturday evening. It was great to be together, but we sure missed the Mike, Melanie and the cousins!

Loving her new dress up clothes

When Josh first got in the tent he said, "This is fun!"

On Friday night, the Burkes invited us to St. Augustine for a train tour of the lights.  They also had a Santa's workshop set-up with some crafts for the kids to do and kid karoake!

McKenna gave a great rendition of Jingle Bells and Josh yelled a jolly, "Merry Christmas" repeatedly!

I tried to get it on video, but it didn't quite come out...the end is the kids dancing to Feliz Navidad.

 And finally the last of our pre-Christmas Christmases...we had our family Christmas on Saturday morning.  Daniel treated us to holiday shaped French Toast for breakfast.

Then we opened presents.  We gave Joshua a wooden train set and Brielle some furniture for her baby dolls.  They also opened gifts from Tata and Papa.  Josh was so excited and was good to say "Thank you for my..." after each gift that he opened.  Brielle is just starting to get into opening presents.

Note Tata and Papa on Skype in the background

Tata and Papa to the Rescue

We were so glad to have my parents here for the month of November.  You can always count on good meals, lots of laughs, and free babysitting when Tata and Papa are around.  They hadn't been down since April, so we were anxious for them to come visit.

While they were here, it was mostly life as usual.  I scheduled all my yearly appointments while I had childcare, so I made visits to the doctor, eye doctor, dentist, hair dresser, and caught up with some friends.  We took an outing to Conner's A-maize-ing Acres, went to the beach, did some landscaping, went to the St. Augustine outlets, had Brielle's baby dedication at church, and did lots of playing. (I guess that's a lot of stuff to do in just a month, especially when you throw in two trips to Tally for football games, plus Thanksgiving, and the first trimester of pregnancy!)
 
We did a house swap for two nights.  They watched the kids at our house, while Dan and I stayed at their condo.  Dan and I did a tour of the Beaches restaurants, hitting up The Reef (St. Augustine), Salt Life, Roy's (progressive dinner - Happy Hour oceanside at The Reef, dinner at Salt Life, and dessert at Roy's.)  The next morning we continued the tour with Bagel World, Starbucks, Angie's Subs, and Mezza Luna.  Finally, we topped it all off the next day with breakfast at The Beach Hut.  We didn't do a whole lot - we bought some new jeans for Dan (something we've been talking about for literally years!), finished reading the Francis Chan book Crazy Love that we'd been working on forever, explored Fort Caroline, and walked on the beach...oh, we even worked out.  We came back refreshed and reconnected (and full!).

Tata and Papa kept the kids busy while we were away with a field trip to Krispy Kreme to learn how doughnuts are made and a visit to the train at the Beaches Museum.

We are so grateful that they are willing and able to come and visit for extended periods of time.  It's really helped the kids to feel connected to them and has been such a blessing for me to have extra hands and company during the times Dan is working a lot.  We are looking forward to their next visit coming up already in January!

Skateboarder

Joshua has been extremely interested in skateboards for a while now.  He loves to stop by the skate park at our playground to watch the big kids and keeps asking if he's big enough yet to get his very own.  We didn't think he was, until one day at the park he was able to get his hands on another little boy's and give it a try (and this boy was younger than Josh).  Joshua did great riding it all over the tennis court with one knee on the board and using the other leg to propel himself, proving that he was indeed already "big enough" for a skateboard.

Daniel's brother, Jeremy, gave us his old one to give to Josh, and we decided it would make a good "Officially Pottytrained" reward.  We Skyped with Jeremy on the morning Josh received his big gift and here's a few pictures to capture his delight.

Speaking of pottytraining...wow!  We are soooooo happy that Joshua has mastered this skill.  It took three different attempts over about 9 months before we could truly say he's got it!  We are so proud of our big boy and what a good job he's doing now staying clean and dry ALL of the time!  (Too bad I won't get much of a break before it's Brielle's turn - here's to hoping what everyone says is true - "Girls are easier!")

Preparing for the holidays

We've been busy in the kitchen preparing holiday treats.  It's fun to do cute projects now that the kids get a kick out of them.  I made Pear Bear (in my case, Apple Bear) muffins from an idea in a Publix magazine and also had fun making some Turkey Cookies for Thanksgiving.

 I've got some good little helpers too!(Making breakfast one morning, everyone needed a turn with the wisk - some with Cheerios, others with eggs)

After a cold morning walk (Josh, Brielle, and our friend Jude all began crying as soon as the strollers turned around heading into the wind), we NEEDED a hot chocolate picnic to warm us up!

We've also been busy around the house putting up and enjoying our Christmas decorations.  We have an extra pretty (and large) Christmas tree this year.  We were in Tally when Papa and Gigi set up their tree.  As soon as Josh woke up from his nap and found the tree, he kept asking where the Christmas Star was for the top.  At first, we couldn't figure out how he knew there should be a star on top, it's not like he remembers last year, but then we realized it was from a Word World episode we'd watched weeks earlier about the holidays.  Good thing our tree topper at home is a star and not an angel or we'd be in trouble.  He was seriously, almost obsessively, concerned about it.  (Papa and Gigi's star never did turn up, so Papa got sent out on a special mission the day we arrived in Tally for Kuder Christmas to ensure that there was a star on top by the time Joshy arrived...good thing too.  He definitely noticed!)

I just realized how great the kids have been with the tree this year.  Last year, we considered not even putting one up because we couldn't imagine them not bothering it all the time (we did put one up, but carefully placed all breakable ornaments).  This year, Brielle touched some ornaments the first day, but I only had to discipline her once to get the message across and since then it hasn't been an issue at all. Yay!

I also had a little bit of fun getting my "crafty" on by making some handprint Christmas tree tshirts with some girlfriends. 

Thanksgiving in Belleview

We were excited to get to go to Redneck Thanksgiving again this year after missing last year due to Daniel's work schedule. The entire Jake Perry Family was there, so it was fun to catch up with the cousins and of course see Mimi and Papa, and all the rest of the extended, extended family.

The food was great, the weather beautiful, and the kids had a blast enjoying our Thanksgiving meal out in the oak hammock on Uncle Juddy and Aunt Lillian's ranch in Central Florida.

 

As they get older, the kids have really started enjoying time with their cousins.  We are sad that they no longer live in Florida and we won't be seeing them as often.  Brielle and Jessie enjoyed this game for hours!

We headed to Tallahassee for the rest of the weekend to hang with the fam and, of course, to cheer the Seminoles on to victory over UF on Saturday afternoon!

Brielle's "Baby" Dedication

We finally had Brielle dedicated at church on November 21st.  Snuck it in before she turned 2 - that's still a baby, right?  Regardless, it was important to Daniel and I to ask for our church family's support in raising her in the Lord and to make a public commitment to do our part as well.  Afterward, we had a quick celebration with swings and Cici's Pizza!  (Pictures in the church didn't turn out well, so we just have pics of the after parties!)

Check out that hottie in his new jeans...

The girl of honor definitely enjoyed herself!

 

Latest addition

The more the merrier...

We are excited to announce we're expecting Baby #3 around May 10th.  I'm 14 weeks along now, feeling good, and the baby's heart is beating strong.  Can't wait to find out on Dec. 2 if Joshua and Brielle will have a brother or sister!

Conner's - Part II

We returned to Conner's A-maize-ing Acres for another dose of down-home farm fun!  The cowboy boots also made a repeat appearance.  This time we took Daddy, Tata, and Papa and met up with the Murphys once we got there.  More fun was had by all...

This girl loves to swing

Not sure Daddy will fit in the cow train

Tate and Brielle on the hayride

Josh and Asher feeding cows on the hayride

So many fun things to do there!

Sorry I didn't get a picture of everyone...it was a little bit of a whirlwind tour!