Catching up . . .

I am quickly falling behind on my blogging. Lots to share and never enough time. First in the announcements of the day, we welcome Katie and Shae to the blogging world. Check with them on announcements and updates from the world of new parents, as their daughter Annabelle is coming any minute now!! That's right, Katie got induced this afternoon so we are all anxiously awaiting Annabelle's arrival.

Now, to play a little catch-up, I know that you are all dying to see some pictures from Christmas break. So here we go.

It was our first dual-family holiday. Always a little tricky, but I think it went quite nicely. We got to spend several days with both families, starting with mine.

I love Christmas at my parents' house. My mom is the master of decorating, cooking, and making us all feel special when all the kids pile back home for the holidays. Dan was home from college, Anne and George and their beagle Bailey were in from Birmingham, and Mom, Dad and our maltese Gracie were all waiting to welcome us home. It was the first time that we've all been in one place since our wedding, and was nice to just hang out and not have any official events to go to! Here are some of the highlights of our time together:

1) The Tri-Cake Tournament: No, this isn't a contest where cakes battle each other in a variety of baking challanges (can you tell I finished HP4 over break?), but rather where we sought to once and for all put to rest the issue of "Which Coconut Cake recipe is the best?" Mom makes it every year, with much more success than I had at Thanksgiving, and is constantly debating which of her 3 favorite recipes takes the Prize. So this year we put it to rest by sampling all three, putting our votes in the hat, and hearing the results read in true Tribal Council format.



2) The First Annual Back of the Truck Ride: For the first time this year, all of us kept noticing a sign for a live nativity right in our very own neighborhood. So after Christmas Dinner, we all decided to go for a drive to view it. I think someone (probably me) made a joke about us hopping in the back of my brother's old truck so we could all fit in one car. But then we really did. Who knows how cold it was outside, but with parents and grandparents packed in the cab, and all 5 of us kids + 1 dog piled in the back, we went for a little spin around the neighborhood. Here's Anne, Dan, and Bailey enjoying the crisp night air.


Of course, it turned into a little longer of a trip when we realized how unbelievebly cold it would be with the wind blowing us, when my dad got a little turned around in the neighborhood we've lived in for almost 15 years, and when we got to the Nativity and it had already closed. But great bonding in the back of the F150, nonetheless.


3) Gifts from My Publisher: For several of our gifts this year, we decided to print MyPublisher books. Big fan. They are quick and very affordable. They have easy simple templates that you can just drop photos into, or if you go way overboard on projects like me, you can design each page yourself in Photoshop and upload as a single jpg. I had a blast designing the pages and it made me want to do more Graphic Design stuff like this. I think that I was infinitly more excited about them than the people who received them! Here are a couple of my favorite pages:


4) The Annual Cousins Picture but without the Annual Cousins Football Game: Every year at my grandmother's, we take the Annual Cousins Picture. This year, with the addition of Adam, we outgrew the couches and moved the photo outdoors to the playing field. Unfortunately, due to time restraints and injuries, the Annual Cousins Football Game didn't happen this year. Some of us were disappointed, but Daniel and Tyler were pumped, as that means that they have 1 more year to strategize about how to destroy the rest of us in the Winter '07 game.


And lastly, I'll close with the family Christmas picture. Another staple of any Lewis Christmas.


Check back for an update on the Rosenbaum Christmas. I think I tend to be a little what they call "long-winded" so I'll save the rest for another day!