We're back!

Well, we've been back for a couple of days but I'm just now sorting through all the pictures we took over the holidays! I wouldn't want to burden my devoted readers (all 2 of ya!) with 150 pictures so I'll limit myself to posting the ones that best depict our trip to Arkansas. Here's an overview:

We arrived a few days before Christmas which gave us time to prepare Aiden for the excitement. Since he's repeating everything we got him to say "Santa", "Merry Christmas", "Christmas lights" - all in his cute lispy voice. On Christmas Eve we went to a church service and he sat through the whole thing like a big boy!
Then Christmas morning came, and Aiden was so patient in waiting for each person to get their presents and open them. There were so many presents that we had to take an "intermission" for breakfast, then went back and opened the rest. All in all, it took about 3 hours to get everything opened! Of course, that was just the first Christmas.Friday morning we left to go see the other side of the family, and we opened more presents there!
We also went over to the cousin's house where Aiden participated in an impromptu jam session with Grampa Holt and cousin Jason.
We came back to the Grandparent's house on Sunday. We had intended on leaving Tuesday to spend New Year's Eve with Beth's family in ATL, but before we left on Friday morning we noticed a rather large pink stain under our Jeep. Luckily there was a Jeep dealer in the town, so we got it towed, and they said they might not see it until the next week. We got a message on Monday saying it was just a small part in the transmission that needed to be replaced, but of course the parts truck hadn't arrived yet, so they said the earliest it would be ready would be noon on Tuesday. Since the drive is about 9 hours we didn't feel like leaving that late in the day, so we just decided to stay through New Year's. We had a relaxing, quiet NYE because we all managed to catch a lovely cold so we didn't feel like going out and partying. We came home Friday and have gotten everything into the house - now we must figure out how to organize it all!

Here's more pictures for your enjoyment:

Aiden on his Elmo chair

Family picture

Stockings hung by the chimney with care

Congratulations Matt!!!

I am so proud of my hubby! He graduated from the IPAP - the Interservice Physician Assistant Program - today!! Woo hoo!! Gotta go buy some of these now:

Elmo LIVE!

Aiden got his first Christmas presents of the year last weekend. Grammy Nancy and Grumpa Brian came down and brought fun stuff for him, including Elmo LIVE! Today Aiden was playing with him and was laughing so hard, it was hilarious! Here's video for you all:

Mark your calendars!!!!

Our favorite favorite favorite show is returning on a new channel - SCRUBS!!!!! Now on ABC. In case you've been under a rock for the past 7 years, here's ABC's "starter kit" for the show:




As you can tell, it is a fantastically funny show, but it's also the most medically accurate one on TV. So Matt gets to pretend diagnose as we watch, and I get to laugh hysterically at the story lines :)

Sorry Mom and Dad...

Apparently there was a hurricane in Columbus last night. This is what we woke up to in our backyard this morning after 50 mph winds blew through the area:

Sorry Mom and Dad, the gazebo you bought for us just couldn't make it through those winds. Now our backyard looks bare. Guess we'll have to work on our patio sooner than we thought! Also, I was working on this blog about 3PM this afternoon when suddenly we lost power. It's now almost 6 PM and we just got power back, and thank goodness, since the temperature is supposed to be chilly tonight and our heat doesn't work without power!

Baby Shower fun

Tonight Beth co-hosted a baby shower for a friend we've made through the PA program. Jackie and Frank are expecting a baby girl in early February, and are moving to another post over Christmas so we wanted to give them a small shower before they left. Here are some pics from the party:

Decorations and Diaper Cake

Beautiful cake! It's actually purple but for some reason it looks blue-ish in the picture.

Shower games! This one was a baby word scramble and was much harder than it looked.

Georgeous quilt made by Amy, another PA student's wife.

Jackie posing with her decorations and cake.

Thanksgiving and more birthday parties!

We went up to Atlanta for Thanksgiving weekend. We started at my Mom's on Wednesday and Matt and Kublai cooked the turkey dinner and all the yummy sides on Thursday. Here's a pic of Matt carving the turkey like an expert surgeon:

Then, after naptime (for Aiden and us!), we had cake and presents for Aiden:

Grumpa Brian sneaking around to help blow the candle out!

He got a John Deere worktable!

And Auntie Becky and Uncle Kublai got him an awesome Ball Pit!

My stepsister Kelly was also visiting from Honduras with her adorable baby girl, Linley:

We went shopping at Garden Ridge on Friday, but we waited til after Noon to avoid the crowds. We ended up getting ornaments for our new tree at a great price, and there was no crowd to be seen, so it was well worth it! On Saturday we headed to my Dad's, where Aiden had yet another cake and more presents:

Part of the Sit 'N Spin is behind him, a tractor is next to him, and he's opening "The Night Before Christmas". He also got a cute workman's vest with lots of tools.

And other than Aiden having a bit of a cold, we had a great time!