It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

I've been getting subtle (ok, not so subtle) hints that my blog needs to be updated, so here it is, finally :-) We've been keeping ourselves busy since Halloween just going about day to day life and watching the moments fly by. Jeremy is truly enjoying his new job at Kennesaw State, and this week he got the official word that he won the "best presentation" award at the conference he went to in September. What a smart, talented husband I have if I do say so myself! ;-) Sarah is really enjoying preschool at Acworth UMC, and we enjoyed going to her Thanksgiving and Christmas programs (cute videos to come one day). Having her school so close to our house has really been a blessing, although it still seems to be quite the ordeal some days to get Daniel and Lauren loaded in the car and get over to the church to pick her up on time. Daniel and Lauren are almost 4 months old now, and their personalities are really showing now. They both smile frequently, and I don't think Jeremy or I will ever get tired of watching them smile. Our most recent entertainment has been watching them smile and "talk" to each other. It's addictive! I'm still gung ho about getting them on a "schedule," and Jeremy is still convinced that will never happen :-) Can't hurt to try, right?

We're enjoying the Christmas season in our new house. We actually managed to get the decorations out the weekend after Thanksgiving! The Christmas tree fits in the house (I told you so Jeremy!), and so far we have only had a few minor ornament breakages. Although Sarah is still very interested in what is "breakable" and "not breakable," she continues to play with the "breakable" ornaments as if they were any other plastic toy. Oh, well!

We have seen Santa three times now, and each time Sarah has more or less asked him for the same thing---more fairy wings :-) She has also asked, for Daniel and Lauren, for pacifiers and bottles. Our first Santa visit was in downtown Acworth on a cold, COLD, Friday night. We made a fun family memory by getting all bundled up and going out in the cold, but I'm not sure we'll try that again next year. Next, I took the kids to explore the mall last week and we couldn't pass up seeing Santa there. Then, just yesterday, the man in red happened to be hanging out in a shopping center near our house with his horses! (I thought he had reindeer, but I guess Santa likes horses, too). Sarah got to have a quick pony ride and yet another visit with Santa. Sarah has kept me laughing through all of these visits, because she keeps thinking that when we see Santa we're actually in the North Pole. She talks all the time about going to the North Pole (but she just calls it "The North"), and she says things like, "Are we going to the North tomorrow?" and "When we go to the North, we'll be really cold!"

Although we've tried to scale back our holiday events this year to save our sanity and to protect the twins' (nonexistent) schedule, we've still managed to do quite a few fun activities. Aside from looking for Santa anywhere and everywhere, we've done some visiting with family and friends. Last Saturday, we had a family adventure road trip to Charlotte and back, all in the same day. That was an adventure to say the least, and Sarah's temper tantrums on the way home kept us entertained---or NOT! Needless to say, by the time we got home around midnight on Saturday, we were all ready for a vacation from the vacation :-) It was really nice to visit with Jeremy's family, though, and I hope they enjoyed meeting Daniel and Lauren for the first time. We're looking forward to our annual Christmas Eve lunch with my side of the family in Atlanta, and then we're heading straight to Greenville to have Christmas with the Gulleys. It should be a busy, loud, and fun-filled weekend, and I sure hope Santa has no trouble making his way to Mimi and PawPaw's house (hopefully with fairy wings, or we will have a very disappointed Sarah...).

I hope you enjoyed all of the pictures from November and December, and check back soon for some cute video clips!