First Part of Winter Break & Christmas!

Craig finally finished his finals on the 18th, so now things are a little less crazy, and a little more fun and relaxing. That's not to say that we haven't been doing much, because we have been keeping very busy spending lots of time with our friends and families! Here is what we have been up to lately through our pictures!

When I took Ella to the dr for her year appointment he said that she had a bit of wheezing that could possible be from her cough, or it could be leading to asthma. He prescribed her an inhaler to take every 4 hours for the next week or so. It's not a big deal... we don't have to wake her up in the night to take it or anything, it's just a few times during the day. At first she would fight it and scream whenever we would try to give it to her... but now she loves it and gets excited to use it! Ella is playing with the little device in the picture. We connect the inhailer to the end, pump two puffs out, and have her breath it in through the mask.

I lost my wedding ring and then found it in the trash outside! I was making oreo balls for some friends and family (picture and recipe below), and I took the ring off so that I wouldn't get oreo all in the diamonds. Well, I noticed that night that I went up to bed without having the ring on, but didn't really worry about it because I remembered it being on the counter in the kitchen. The next moring it wasn't on the counter and I couldn't find it anywhere! I had cleaned up the mess that I made in the kitchen and taken the trash out the night before (to our big garbage can in the back). I had a feeling that it was in the trash. I prayed to find the ring and still felt like it was in the trash outside. I found my beautiful ring inside a wrinkle of a grocery bag that was in the large trash bag that was in the large trash can! I am to grateful to have my ring back!

Here are the oreo balls that almost ruined my marriage! Just kidding!
They are pretty good though... and this is how you make them:

1 package of oreos
I brick of cream cheese

blend to thick paste, refrigerate to harden,
dip in melted chocolate chips and sprinkles,
refrigerate until hard

On the Sunday before Christmas we went to the annual shrimp and pizza dinner at GG's (Craig's grandma)... because who doesn't love shrimp and who doesn't love pizza? It was a lot of fun seeing the family and having most of the cousins play together. We ate lots of good food, exchanged gifts and sang Christmas songs. At one point during Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, the two oldest girl cousins held hands and walked around the room smiling and waving to us all as if they were in a parade. It was pretty hilarious! After that they wanted to sing Rudolph over and over again so they could have their parade.

Just look at that form!

Also during the break after having a Wii session with our neighbors the day before, we all decided to go real life bowling! I knew that I was going to be awesome because I'm pretty sweet when it comes to virtual bowling... and seriously, there is not much of a difference between virtual life and real life!!! jk... sometimes I try to sound like a major gamer because I think it's funny if people believe me. Honestly though, I will play the Wii every once in a while if we have people over... and also honestly, I was pretty bad at both. Despite that, it was a lot of fun to hang out with our neighbors outside of the neighborhood!

Me and the Snow Princess having a stimulating conversation.

We went to Richmond on Christmas Eve to have our annual Christmas Eve dinner with Craig's s mom's side of the family. We decided to go to Richmond a bit early so that Ella could see the Legandary Santa Claus. This guy is the real deal! Craig went to him every year growing up. Craig's parents have a video of him going when he was five or six where Santa asked him what he wanted and Craig said said "a gameboy and surprises" and Santa though he said "a gameboard and surprises." So needless to say, Craig was kind of freaking out because Santa didn't hear him right... and he didn't want a gameboard! Also in the same clip you see Craig looking at his mom trying to figure out what she is saying to him, and then him realizing and zipping up his fly really quick and acting really embarrased. haha. It's pretty funny.

Anyway, so this Santa goes down and up the chimney every few hours, calls each child by name, and even has a snow princess by his side. It's very magical to most... but definitely wasn't magical for Ella. She was pretty traumatised by having her mom hand her over to an old man with a scary beard, then walk away, while tons of people are looking at her and laughing. Since then she has freaked out a few times whenever a new person looks at her. Pretty sad. The picture below shows a pretty good moment.

Craig and I don't have many pictures together anymore... so this is us
outside of the Children's Museum where we saw Santa.

We spent Christmas morning with my parents and brothers. Here is a picture of Ella reading the bible. She really got so many new great toys and books from her grandparents. Like I said in the last post, she is definitely set for a year!

Grandma Rainock got her this huge stuffed My Little Pony. Ella kissed it
as soon as she saw it! I'm glad I was able to capture the moment.

On Christmas night we took a walk with my parents and bro, Cordell, around the neighborhood to look at the luminares that everyone had put out. It was very pretty and I wish I would have taken a picture of them! Oh well. All in all we had a wonderful Christmas spent with family and filled with lots of love and laughter. We are so grateful for this time of year to remember the birth of our Savior and to share with those we love.

My parents were so kind to watch Ella on friday night so that Craig and I could go on a date for our anniversary. Our third anniversary isn't until the 30th of this month, but we had to take advantage of the babysitting while we could! Here we are standing in front of beautiful paintings at a musuem. Not really, this is before we went out, in my parents dining room in front of some of my dads paintings. We went to the Cheesecake Factory and then just walked around at the Short Pump mall... it was nice just to spend a little time by ourselves!

We hope you all had a happy holiday!