December come and gone...

As the title says, December has come and gone. We seemed to be very busy in December. Also, Dan got a new computer and it was hard for him to give up time playing on it to allow me to blog.

Right before Thanksgiving we purchased a new car! We are now truly parents - we drive a minivan. It's pretty fancy though and is much nicer than our previous car. Because of the new car Dan and I had said we weren't giving presents to each other for Christmas. When Dan went to Seattle to visit his work he came back with a present for me. I got a new digital SLR camera!! I'm so excited about it! I took a lot of pictures and am trying to learn the tricks of the camera. I'm on prednisone again and my hands tend to be a bit shaky, therefore I have a lot of fuzzy pictures (when I'm trying out not using the flash). I'm also getting used to using Picasa, not iPhoto to edit pictures. Here are some pictures from December:

Getting our Christmas Tree:

Posing - before our tree got too crispy (we were bad at watering it this year)

An attempted picture before we went to see Santa:

Dan, posing for my new camera:

Holly in her crib:

Elliott and all his cars:

Elliott was teaching Holly to crawl on this day. I think here he is telling her some story. She loves it when he pays any attention to her:

Holly, practicing sitting. She is a pro now:

Christmas was busy! We spent Christmas Eve in Wilsonville with Dan's family. We do a gift exchange and open presents then. On Christmas day were able to stay home until about 1pm before heading out to visit family. It was really nice to have that time in the morning to open presents and relax before having to start getting ready and rushing around. Holly got in a good nap, which I was very happy about. We went back to Wilsonville for a few hours to open stockings and eat an early dinner before heading out to Beaverton for dessert with my family.

Santa came and filled the kids stockings on Christmas eve:

Elliott woke us up at about 8:30 on Christmas morning (thanks, Elliott, I liked that extra sleep time!). I could hear him running around upstairs; he was super excited about everything.

Holly checking out her glow worm from Santa.

Holly and Cora:

Porter Cousins:

Christmas at Sarah's house:

Dan, reading to Elliott and Holly:

In case you didn't know, Elliott's favorite color is green. He'll tell you all about it. Apparently when given the option he prefers to paint in monochrome.