Christmas Town!

Last weekend was Evie's first trip to Busch Garden's for their Christmas Town celebration. We went with Nathan's parents and had a great time!! In the past our Decembers have been so cold that hanging out outside for several hours hasn't been appealing. It's so much milder this year - it was actually quite pleasant. While not all the rides are open, BG does have a couple going. They also have shows, yummy food, fun shops and more and better displayed lights than I have ever seen anywhere else. There were 100s of lighted pine trees as well as every other tree, building, ride possible - all decorated in a festive, non-tacky way. Sadly our camera ran out of batteries half way through. Grandpa M was kind enough to share his pictures with us though! :)
Evie on the tram in, ready to go!

Evie LOVED all the Christmas trees, big and small. :)



Evelyn's first BG ride! While she doesn't look thrilled in the pictures, she did enjoy it and was excited to go again with Daddy. :)


There was so much to look at and see - this was Evie the whole time:
Nathan and  mom rode this roller coaster. Evie was in complete awe.
Just a few light pictures...

As long as it's warm enough (I've become a wimpy southerner :p), we'd love to go again next year! :)

Dads Are So Cool

So today I went to a lovely jewelry party at my friend Jessie's house (31Bits jewelry, if you're curious). Evie and Nathan stayed home for some father/daughter time. When I came home I walked in to this in my living room:

Apparently Nathan and Evie decided that she was ready to be introduced to blanket forts. By the time I came home they had already played multiple games of chase throughout the fort and Evie had moved all her toys in with her.

Minor accident:

She was SO excited to show me when I came home.

Fireworks, pt 2

I realized I never followed up with the promised Grand Illumination pictures. Evie has recently switched to one really long nap a day which I love, but I've also taken to napping during that time, so my productivity hasn't increased as I'd wished. :) Here are some more firework experience pictures though.
Our favorite place to watch the fireworks is behind the Capitol. I love to see how the fireworks light up the buildings, trees and sky. They also do some special fireworks just at the Capitol.
Here's Evie bundled up for the walk down! It was actually *quite* warm that evening, however, so many of the layers were shed by the time the fireworks started.

Evie and the fireworks

More pictures of Grand Illumination are coming, but here is a video of Evie's firework experience. :) She did manage to close her mouth about half way through. I think she liked them, though she may have just been in shock - we were pretty close!

Daddy!

This is Evie's favorite word:

Nathan is standing behind me, which is why she keeps looking up :-)

The Beginings of Christmas!

The day after Thanksgiving we headed to Charlottesville to spend the day with our good friends the Trimbles, Williams and Muellers! Laura and Aaron very kindly entertained and fed all of us in their lovely home even though Aaron is currently in residency and working nights! It was such a pretty day - we all enjoyed hanging out on UVA's grounds (yes, they are called "grounds", not "campus" - you might call it a rather preppy school ;)). Evie loved running around with Adelynn and Margaret. They were both so sweet to "Baby Evie". I didn't get the greatest pictures, but it's hard with 3 active little girls!

During nap time in the afternoon the guys all played strategy games and us girls made wreaths!! REAL wreaths! Like go-out-into-the-woods-and-pick-real-greenery-and-berries-and-pinecones kind of wreaths! Laura has the perfect yard for gathering greenery. Here we are ready to begin!
I can't believe I didn't get a picture of everyone's final masterpiece, but here is Laura with here's a picture of Laura with hers and a picture of mine on our wall. .
I think this should be a new Thanksgiving tradition, friends... :)

On Saturday we headed out to the forest (aka, Lowe's) to get our Christmas tree! Evie loved helping pick it out. She inspected each option very carefully
We don't want Evie playing with the real tree, but to keep it from being too tantalizing, we decided to get Evie her own little tree that she CAN play with and decorate. She is thrilled. She didn't want to venture far from it all weekend and it was the first thing she'd go to whenever she woke up from a nap or we came home from running errands. Here she is decorating it and then the final product. :) (btw - do you notice that little tiny curl at the back of her head?? It think the curly hair is coming!! :))
I don't have a good picture yet of our real tree, but here we are with Great-Grandma and Grandpa Mortier in front of the beautiful tree at the Dewitt Wallace art museum yesterday. :)
Evie was only mildly interested in the art museum, but it was funny to see what random pieces of art stood out to her. Her favorites were a masthead from a ship poking out from the wall (not pictured) and this funny folk art picture of a little girl and her kitty. She kept running over to it and pointing up at it. :)

Turkey Trotting and Turkey Eating

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving this year with new traditions and old. I've realized that Thanksgiving and Christmas tend to sneak up pretty quickly when you have a November birthday! I felt a little taken off guard this year, but we had a great long weekend of extended family, friends, and just our family.
Thanksgiving started with what will be our new family tradition - the Blue Talon 5k Turkey Trot bright and early in the morning! Nathan and I were both hoping to do it, but it ended up just being him (I slacked on the training, I admit). Plus, someone needed to be with Evie. :) So Nathan ran the 5k with 2300 (!!) others. He was so fast that I missed all photo opportunities of him, but here's one at the start of the race with everyone pouring into Colonial Williamsburg.
We did get some of Nathan and Evie afterwards. :)
Nathan did an amazing job. The atmosphere around races is always fun and Evie loved the whole event - especially all the dogs to bark at and people to look at. :) we can't wait to all do it next year and make it part of our Thanksgiving tradition.
After the race we headed home to whip up a pie and mashed potatoes to take to Mom and Dad Mortier's house. I didn't get many pictures, but here we are as a family!
Highlights of the day for Evie included looking out Grandma and Grandpa's windows and swinging on their swing. :)