Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope you all have a safe and blessed Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!

Thank you for all your support this year (all of you that take your time to read this blog).  We leave for Vienna in less than two weeks and I promise to pick up the blogging once we get settled.  

In the meantime, Merry Merry!!  

Merry Mini Christmas

We had a very mini Christmas at our house this past weekend. My brother, Grayson, will be spending Christmas in Colorado this year...so we had an early Christmas celebration for him at our house.

 It was lots of fun with lots of yummy food. See that cake...its Alton Brown's Red Velvet cake recipe...so delish. Those are Chocolate Crackle Cookies in the back. I found the recipe here. They were also yummy and made excellent Christmas gifts for the neighbors.

All of this baking was made possible by our new favorite toy....Merry Christmas to us:) Thanks Dad!!

 Along with the food there was excellent wine...

 And a goodie box of treats for our guest....

 These two were the center of attention the entire night....

 The lab is our nephew, River. Tillie is not so sure what to think of her much younger but way bigger cousin.

 

 For the most part you could tell she wasn't happy with any other furry animals in our house. This is her hiding behind my Mom...avoiding River like the plague. At times though she did warm up...

I hope everyone is enjoying all of the fun Christmas gatherings going on this time of year! We loved having our family over to celebrate!

December Activities

A short post to let you know what we have been up to in December...it's been busy but probably the least stressful holiday season we've ever had. We've enjoyed every minute of it...I think because we finished our shopping in November. Reminder to self...do that every year. Here we are at Talon's office Christmas party...

We've baked SO many delicious goodies this year. This specific day I was baking red and white sugar cookie pinwheels. From the recipe I found here. They are definitely not as hard as they look...just a little time consuming.

We celebrated this big guy turning one...so fun to watch him grow:)

  We've also made several attempts to drag Tils along for the ride where in the end every single time we decide it's best that she stays at home. This is her seating on the console in between the drivers and passenger side seat because she is insane in the car... 

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season as much as we are!

Year Two.

Tal and I are celebrating 2 years of marriage today:) Well, we've been celebrating all weekend but today is the official day of matrimony. We decided that the best way for us to celebrate would be to do something together. So on Saturday we headed to Atlanta for a day trip. We had so much fun just hanging out together all day...

 In true Woods family form...we made a stop at IKEA while we were there...

Where we loaded up on lots of goodies for the hizzy...

  It was a day of celebration which was an obvious excuse to eat terribly unhealthy food and drink lots of Starbucks....

 Tal's basket of goodies he was semi-surprised with this morning {note: your husband can view all of your instagram photos that you post} which he more than deserves for being such an amazing husband.

Here's to many many more happy years of marriage {like fo-eva}....

Long Overdue Update

Sorry for the extended absence.  In fact, I've been reading your blogs between feedings, changing and walking Elizabeth, but I haven't had much time to put my thoughts together and write.  Speaking of Elizabeth, she is a little colicky, but we seemed to have turned a corner.  Luke is also well but a bit a lot more needy than he was before her arrival.

While all of this has been going on we packed and moved out of our house, put our stuff in storage and moved into a temporary rental (more on that in a minute).  We also closed on our house.  So, we're officially homeless.  Leaving our house was  harder than I anticipated - our first home together and Luke's first home made it really hard to say good-bye.

Ok. So, now for our new, temporary home.  We're staying in a 1400 square foot home on the CT shore.  It's bright and sunny home and we're really happy here.  And we're literally across the street from the Long Island Sound, with water views from our windows.  If this was summer, we could never afford this!

It's a cute cedar clapboard house with a nice stone patio which we've used for lunches.  The kitchen isn't huge, but it's open clean and bright.

And, it's open to the living room, below.

There are two first floor bedrooms (ours and Elizabeth's) and Luke gets the entire upstairs to himself!  It's his own secret hideout and he loves it.

Other than the occasional jaunts to the beach and napping whenever I can, that 's what has been going on here.

I'm hoping as we settle into more of a routine that I can get back to posting more frequently.

Perfection

The past days I have been spending every waking minute with Elizabeth and I love it.  

Have a great weekend!  

It's A.....

GIRL!!!

Meet Elizabeth Teagan born on Tuesday, September 27th!  And, in case you don't realize Elizabeth and I share the same birthday.  She graced us with her presence on my 40th!  What a miraculous gift. 

Our hearts are filled with joy!  God bless!