Charlotte's First Birthday Party

It was so fun to Celebrate Charlotte's First Birthday with everyone while we were home. She loved all the presents and above all her cake (mainly the pink icing).

Charlotte's First Christmas!

The first portion of our big trip home of course was Christmas! We had a blast celebrating the holiday this year at home with all of our family and friends and the best part was celebrating this year with Charlotte!

I could write a novel here about the fun we had, the memories we made, and all of the stuff we did while we were home for the holiday - but I'm SURE you'd all be bored after the first sentence and start scanning for the pictures. So...I'll list a few of the Christmas highlights:

• The Plane Ride - Charlotte was so adorable walking through the airport saying "hi" to everyone she saw.
• Gifts - Charlotte received such wonderful presents - thanks everyone! Among her favorites: Elmo, her cell phone, her Bitty Baby, the sound puzzles, Tad, of course books, and her adorable new clothes. I do have to add though that she had just about as much fun ripping up tissue paper as she did playing with her new toys
• Santa (or my mom & dad) brought me a sewing machine! I'm so excited and currently working on my first project - stay tuned, I'll be posting lots about my beginner sewing projects & adventures
• Family - Charlotte had a blast playing with her cousins. We don't get the chance to see her interact with other kids very often, it was so fun to watch her having fun and interacting with her cousins

A Belated Merry Christmas to all and we feel so blessed. It was really an amazing year to look back on. Thanks to everyone & enjoy our photos!

Call me a "Slacker"

Please accept this as my formal apology to our followers and fans for my lack of posting (I've recently found out about many people who love reading about Charlotte and our lives in Texas - I had no clue so many people were following us). Last month was absolutely crazy with work, holiday happenings and traveling. I have so so many things to blog about and so many fun Charlotte pictures to share. I'm going to work hard this week to get Christmas, First Birthday and some fun start of 2010 stuff posted.
Stay tuned...and thanks for not being mean to me about my lack of posts :)

Santa = Fail

I was really excited to take Charlotte to sit on Santa's lap for her first Christmas and get a cute photo. Doug was skeptical. Well, the pictures speak for themselves (yes, we had that child screaming loudly).

Oh, and she was a happy girl before and a happy girl after (and I mean immediately after), just not while sitting on Santa's lap.

We'll try again next year & hopefully get a better result.

only 1 more month - really?!

yes, really...Charlotte's 11 months old! Only 1 more month until she's 1 whole year old! wow! She's making it harder and harder for me to snap a good picture with the fun sign, but at least I tried, huh? ok, ok, she might* have a mullet
*delete "might" from that sentence and don't tell, she gets embarrassed

Our First Texas Thanksgiving (and Charlotte's first Thanksgiving)

Since we were unable to come home for Thanksgiving this year, we had to do it right here in Texas. Afterall, it was Charlotte's first Turkey Day and I decided the time had come to cook my first turkey. We were also lucky enough to have Megan here with us, so it made it feel a little more like a holiday with family. We're so happy she was here to hang out and celebrate with us (I know if she wasn't here, I'd have been missing home much more - thanks Meg!)! We even broke out 2 bottles of the waiting-for-a-special-time-to-drink-wine we bought on our honeymoon.

We also got to see and talk to both of our families on Skype - it was great to see everyone together and chat a little.

THE MEAL:

So my first stab at cooking a turkey turned out amazingly wonderful (especially considering that I only spent $4 on my 12lb Jennie O turkey)! It was super tasty, juicy and seriously just sooo good! Additional menu items included: Susan's stuffing, Donna's greenbean casserole, my specialty sweet potatoes and some cranberry sauce/jello stuff that I forgot to put on the table - whoops. That was actually the only dinner mishap and nobody seemed to mind. Oh yeah, and of course we had gravy too, which was terrific thanks to Megan. For dessert: homemade pumpkin cheesecake. My first cheesecake too, which was also super yummy (can't go wrong with a Paula Dean recipe I guess). I'm thinking everyone enjoyed the meal because unfortunately for us, we only had about 3-4 servings of everything leftover.

Oh, and I pulled out our china of course since we were certainly celebrating the holiday and had to do it right : )

Precooked items:

The Finished Turkey - Success!CHARLOTTE'S FIRST THANKSGIVING:
It was a year for "firsts" all around: Charlotte's First Thanksgiving, I cooked my first Turkey-Day meal and Doug carved his first turkey. Charlotte LOVED having guests here to entertain her (the girl loves attention). And the food? Well, she thoroughly enjoyed her first Thanksgiving meal! She chowed down on green beans, sweet potatoes, and even stuffing and some turkey. There was a fight in our house over leftovers the next few days.

THE GUESTS:

Besides Doug, Charlotte & me, Megan was here to celebrate with us and Tony (our old realtor and friend from high school) and his girlfriend, Liz joined us for dinner. Meghan & Mark (our neighbors & good friends) joined us for the after-dinner party and dessert. It was the perfect number of guests and we all had a great time. Unfortunately, after being picture-happy as we started cooking, I kinda forgot when everyone was there.

It was certainly hard to be away from home, missing our families for Thanskgiving, but with all of the cooking, eating, drinking, eating, cleaning, eating and simply hanging out at home, we managed to have a great holiday here in Texas. We are very thankful for our friends here for celebrating with us and especially to Megan for coming down for the holiday.

One last picture...the food must've been pretty good because we had very little leftover:

Our Halloween Trip Home

Since it's just about Thanksgiving, I am feeling like quite the slacker since I haven't blogged since before Halloween. So instead of writing out a nice little story about our wonderful trip home to nky for Halloween, I'll just post our photos. Needless to say, Charlotte had a great time being a cowgirl and hanging out with her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins! And yes, it was wonderful to be home.

Oh yes, and we took her 10 month birthday pictures in the airport (she wasn't in the mood to sit still):