We wish you a Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from my family to yours!!!!!

During the week of Christmas, we traveled on our third and final family vacation for 2010.  But before we left on our trip, we celebrated an early Christmas dinner and opened gifts with family on my side.

This year we started a new tradition exchanging cookies and having a contest of who made the Best Cookie!  There were many great entries into the cookie contest and so full of creativity too!  We all voted for the best overall cookie, and I am happy to say that Derek and I won for 2010!  Woohoo!!!  We made these delicious Mint Oreo truffles!

The rolling pin trophy was given to the winner for 2010, Derek and I, and we will bring it back next year for the 2011 contest!  It will be passed along to the next year's winner....unless of course we win 2 years in a row!  :)

The week of Christmas we spent time with Derek's family in Philadelphia.  One night we decided to travel into downtown Philly to eat at Bobby Flay's restaurant named Bobby's Burger Palace.  The food was amazing!  We watch him all the time on the Food Network channel, so naturally we were curious to visit his restaurant!

We also went ice skating one day during that week.  Logan just finished taking his second ice skating lesson, so he wanted to show Papa and Nanny how well he could skate now!  Another day we took a train ride to this cute little place called Media!  We walked through the shops and ate lunch at one of the restaurants.  This is a tradition that Derek remembers doing every year at Christmas time when he was younger, so he wanted to share it with his kids.  What a fun tradition!  :)

Lastly, at the end of our trip it was finally Christmas day!!!  The kids were getting anxious all week to open their presents since Christmas fell on the last full day we were in Philly.  Here is a picture of them Christmas morning ready to open their gifts!

Logan was so blessed and got almost everything he wanted this year!  Elise had a great time opening her gifts, but halfway through she was tired of having to move on to the next present.  She wanted to just be able to sit and play with each toy as she opened it.

Overall we made many great memories with both of our families and had tons of fun!  Merry Christmas!!!

Thanksgiving in Arizona

So we didn't take a vacation during the summer like we normally do, but instead we have been planning all our traveling during these last 4 months of the year.  Between buying and moving into a new house, and then taking our scheduled trips at the end of the year, we have been super busy lately!

Over Thanksgiving week, we planned a visit to see my Dad in Arizona.  They moved down to the warm weather, which is great because now we have someplace warm to visit when it's cold up here in the North!  Our trip just happened to be during a little colder week for what they typically have, so the weather was only a high in the 60's during the day.  But I would take that anyday over snow, which I heard Ohio had while we were gone.

We did some sightseeing around the city of Phoenix.  Saw LOTS of cactus, which were pretty interesting!  We took a picture next to one that was at least 3 times taller than we were!  Mountains surround the entire city and it's such a beautiful view!  When the sun sets, the mountains display the most amazing colors!

One day while we were there, we planned a train ride through canyons north of Phoenix.  The views were breathtakingly beautiful!  The train ride was 4 hours long round trip, and we rode through very remote areas of Arizona.  We saw an eagle's nest tucked onto a rock ledge, heard history stories of the area, and viewed the rock formations.  We took some amazing pictures, went through a cool tunnel, and enjoyed our first train ride through the countryside!

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on all the things we are thankful for, and this trip really showed God's artwork in His beautiful creation!  Among many other things, I am so thankful for that!  God is good!

Overall, we had a great visit!  The grandparents were able to see how much Elise had grown in the past 8 months!  Lots of fun!!

Disney World Trip

What a trip!  We spent 6 fun filled days in Orlando, Florida during mid October on a family vacation to Disney World!!!

This was a first time trip to Disney for everyone except me and my husband.  Derek's parents, my cousin Kristen, and the four of us all went on this trip together.  I must say, Disney World parks are super crowded and yet at the same time the smoothest experience EVER visiting an amusement park.  We thought October would be less crowded than the summer months, and boy were we wrong!  With the Halloween celebrations at Magic Kingdom and the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, we still had to fight the crowds and wait in long lines.

Four of our six day vacation were spent visiting the Disney parks!  We had found a GREAT deal on a 3-bedroom condo only 5 minutes from the parks, which turned out to be sooo nice for our big group!

Out of all the rides and roller coasters we went on, we thought that the Rock-n-Roller Coaster was by far the BEST ride out of them all!!

Here are some pictures of our trip.  Enjoy!