Holiday Happenings

November began with my niece Kara's 7th birthday!

Thanksgiving was spent at my parents'.  It was a great day with the majority of my immediate family plus my sister-in-law Brittany's family.  That Saturday was my Dad's 60th birthday party!

And for a sweet end to the month, Nathaniel Quinn Davis was born November 30th to my sister Allene and her family!  This pic is from when he was a few weeks old...

Quinn

We celebrated our our 6-month anniversary in December with a date night to J. Peter's Grill for dinner and Hollywild Lights Safari afterwards =)

Crazy number of cars lined up to get in!

Basically we drove through the zoo and they had various lights displays.  Some smart people in the car in front of us for a while had a flashlight so they could search for animals in their cages!

Awesome whale of lights...

At the end they had a "Deer Forest" and people could get out and feed the deer.  We didn't care to feed them, but it was Insane getting to the exit!  Cars absolutely Everywhere in this huge field, some people out of their cars, herds of deer... it was nuts!

Needless to say, we made our way out and headed home.  Was a fun albeit interesting experience!

Later in the month we celebrated my brothers' birthdays.  No pics of them, lol.  Just one of Quinn and I =)

Andrew and I wanted to do stockings on Christmas day, and I wanted to try and make them.  I'd seen online about making stockings from sweaters.... so I decided to give it a try!  With help and an afternoon at Allene's using her sewing machine, followed by an afternoon at my Mom's with her help and serger (Extremely important to the success of this project!), and then a few hours of hand stitching... both were finished and ready to be hung =)

Basically how they started, except that for Andrew's, the sweater had a turtleneck that I incorporated into the stocking.

All finished!

Our first Christmas tree =)

December 22nd, we celebrated "Barron Christmas" with the extended Barron Family... 28 of us... only missing 4 people I think!

Andrew made Swedish Tea Rings, which were a big hit...

We had a great time eating, talking, exchanging gifts, and playing goofy games... one of which was dividing into teams and dressing up all the dads/uncles as Santas.  Hilarious.

Christmas Eve, we had a candlelight service at church and then spent the night at my parents' place.  Andrew made cinnamon rolls for breakfast/snacking until Christmas dinner which typically is mid/late afternoon.  Before everyone else started getting there, we celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple!

I love this guy =)

Ready to unload our stockings....

So blessed.

All my immediate family gradually made it over, and we started opening gifts.  For as long as I can remember, we have rotated around where each person gets to pick a gift out from under the tree that is to someone else, they open their gift, and then we move to the next.  It helps us all get to enjoy the gift giving aspect more, and necessarily it means opening presents takes a Long time! So we opened for a while, ate Christmas dinner, and went back to finish with presents.  And before the day was over, a family picture was in order =)