Category Archives: Holidays

Posts about celebrating holidays with our family and those we love. Who doesn’t love a good holiday celebration?

Christmas break

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Christmas break was in Texas this year and was a blast. We loved seeing the Ellsworths and enjoying time off from school. The weather was really nice, too. A little rainy at first, but later sunny and so warm and nice (except for those few eerie foggy nights).

Anyway, let’s start with pictures!

First of all, isn’t he just the cutest baby ever?

 We sure think so.

Carson did awesome on the plane ride home from Houston, but he didn’t do so hot getting out there. We don’t blame him: it was a long day of travel with a five-hour layover in Denver (turns out we’ll do about anything for the cheapest fares). It was a long day for Carson and all of us, but we all survived. Here’s Carson on the first leg of the journey.

Carson also got his first haircut over the break. Nothing major, he just had some long stringy pieces that I trimmed. I’ve never cut anyone’s hair in my life, but I don’t think I messed up.

I got a haircut, too, from my sister Brenn. Well really, like 4 haircuts. She would cut it, and we’d both say, “Let’s go a little shorter.” Then she’d cut it again the next day or so. It was fun, and now I’m a whole new me! I’m liking the short hair.

We really liked seeing family over the break. Carson gave us lots of good laughs, especially for grandma, who just can’t wait until he can talk and play.

Carson also met his great grandma, my mom’s mom. We went to visit her at her new house in Houston.

There Carson also met Aunt Melissa, our number one blog fan. :) Thanks for always being the first to comment, Melissa! Melissa’s five-year-old son Byron got some great laughs out of Carson, too. Also, Byron is a Star Wars fan, and we are Byron fans. Yeah, Byron, Star Wars rocks!

Below: Mom and Jennie at Grandma’s house (and a great photobomb by Brenn).

And finally, we had one awesome sushi night, our last night in Texas. It’s kind of become a tradition when we all go home to make homemade sushi. This sushi night was probably the best of them all. I mean, look at all this deliciousness. We went all out. One of the best parts is how everyone gets to name the sushi roll they make. (My favorite name was Brenn’s Rick Asltey roll…get it? Rickroll!) We even had homemade fortune cookies by Jennie. (Yes, I fully realize that sushi is Japanese and fortune cookies are…well, American wanna-be Chinese, but, hey. Perhaps our sushi nights aren’t the most authentic, but they sure are tasty.)

It was a great, wonderful break. Very relaxing. And Christmas morning with Carson was probably the best of all. Even though he’s too young to do much besides grab for the pretty wrapping paper, having a kid on Christmas changes everything and makes it so much more special and fun.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s too!

The Thanksgiving of all Thanksgivings

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This year Thanksgiving was especially awesome because Josh and I got to be with both of our families, all at once. Yay! Josh and I basically come from mirror families: both the oldest of six kids, with siblings all the same ages, Josh with all brothers and me with mostly sisters (and one awesome brother Cole we all love). So when Josh and I got married, our families got along great and became best buds. Josh’s mom was so nice and invited my whole family out to their house for Thanksgiving, and it was a blast! Thank you so much Lymans, and thanks for coming, Ellsworths! There was lots of good food, some great Just Dance 3ing, gingerbread houses, games, family photos, and fun.

We got to spend a whole week with the Lymans, too, which was a blast. Carson never lacked for attention, and it turns out he’s got some awesome uncles who love to hold him and make him smile and laugh. And Grandpa and Grandma Lyman, wow! They were the best. Carson was so good and happy all week.

Here’s some photos from the trip! Thanks again family! We love you all!

Halloween 2011

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Happy Halloween! For his first Halloween, Carson dressed up as a cuddly (or rather, cowardly) lion. I was Dorothy and Josh was the Scarecrow – yes, okay, mine and Josh’s costumes were recycled costumes from two years ago. A Halloween costume faux pas, perhaps, but hey, they were economical. (Actually, my Dorothy costume was recycled from several years ago…I think this is at least the fifth time I’ve been Dorothy in my life…oh, well…) Anyway, using recycled costumes was worth it because Carson the Lion was so cute. :) Check out more pictures at this post.

So dressing up was a lot of fun! I recently got a sewing machine, so I was going to attempt to make Carson’s costume, but I’m so glad we found a low-price one at Walmart instead. I know I’m not quite that pro yet. :) I did make a hat and some other improvements for Josh’s costume, so at least I did some sewing! (The nice thing about sewing a scarecrow costume is that you don’t have to worry about straight lines since it’s all supposed to look scraggily anyway.)

On the Friday before Halloween, Josh’s company had a family Halloween party that we dressed up for and went to. And holy cow! What a party! It really just consisted of waiting in line to take a tour through the intensely decorated building, but in line they had cotton candy, popcorn, ice cream, soda, jugglers, magicians, and guys with snakes and tarantulas as entertainment.

Yes, that’s a real tarantula, inches from Carson’s face. They guy put it up there before we could do anything. So there, Carson’s not cowardly at all.

Actually, Carson was too sleepy to be cowardly. He slept through pretty much the entire thing in Dad’s arms.

At the end he woke up, but by then he was ready to get home, get a bath, and get some food.

It was fun to get out, see lots of fun Halloween costumes, chat with some friends, and walk through the awesome building, which, seriously, was intense. Parts were more like a haunted house (but they always had shortcuts to skip past those. Good thing, because Paige Carson got scared). Lots of fun.

And we also celebrated Halloween this year with the very first pumpkin Josh and I have ever carved together! It turned out great, thanks to Josh’s pro handling of the carving tools. I was better at scooping out the pumpkin guts; that’s always been my favorite part, anyway.

So all in all, a great Halloween! Complete with leftover candy since we only got four trick-or-treaters last night.