December fun and Holidays!

 Lots of fun festivities in December! 

The month started with the UWS Holiday Gala, which was an evening cruise along the river. It was so much fun! 

With the Kings and the Andersons

Collin continued to be as cute as always and started to love playing in boxes. His hair is still crazy and fluffy most of the time.

We went to see the Zoo Lights!

Collin loved the lights and kept pointing at them.

I made us some family stockings! And when I say "made," I mean that I bought plain ones and hot glued felt designs on them. Some day I'll learn how to sew nice ones :)

 

On Christmas Eve, we walked along Peacock Lane, a cute neighborhood that's famous for every house having lots of Christmas lights. 

Collin pointed at all the lights here, too.

Collin looked cute in his funny Christmas pajamas.

Christmas morning! Collin got a slide, which he spent most of the morning playing on, and didn't care much about opening other presents. We loved spending Christmas at home together this year! We had a quiet morning listening to Christmas music and opening presents and watching Collin play with his toys.

We made the most delicious muffins of my life- pumpkin cream cheese, recipe found from Kim's pinterest :) 

Collin took a break from sliding to pose for a picture with his bedroom art Lindsey made for him.

Cuddling with his new pillow pet

He also loves dumping out his mega blocks!

Christmas dinner. So maybe we like taking pictures of our most delicious meals, okay?

Christmas aftermath

A green Christmas bath

We celebrated our 3 year anniversary on the 27th. We went out to a nice dinner to celebrate. 

 We headed to Sunnyside for New Year's weekend. I only got a few random pictures, but we had a lot of fun visiting with Rob's family. Cory and Minnie threw a great New Year's Eve party at their house.

Collin loved Tiffanie and Jeff's dog. He even tasted some of her food when no one was looking.

He also loved his cousin Janai!

Cute picture of Collin and his Grandma Grimmer

Our family with Rob's parents

Birthday and Thanksgiving!

November was such an exciting month! We had so many fun things to look forward to all in the same week or so. There was the wedding weekend, then Tuesday we had a fun date planned to see Breaking Dawn (yes, I am grouping this in with things I was excited for), Wednesday was my 25th birthday, Thursday was Thanksgiving, Friday was Black Friday of course, and then Saturday was time to put up the Christmas tree! And even after all of that, we have all the fun events of Christmas to look forward to. So many things to be excited about and we have been loving life!

My 25th birthday was great. The day before, we had a pre-birthday date where we saw Breaking Dawn (loved it), and went to Benihanas for dinner (where you sit with a group at a table and the chef cooks everyone's food right in front of you). The chef was really entertaining and it was such a fun experience!

On my actual birthday, Rob stayed home in the morning and made me cinnamon muffins, and then I left Collin with him while I went on a nice, stroller-free run in the rain. Then, Rob went to school while Collin napped, and I got to read for a little while. We had prepared by doing our cleaning and laundry before my birthday so that I could spend the day relaxing in a clean house. When Rob came home, we spent the afternoon hanging out together at  home, and went to Famous Dave's for dinner. Rob made me the most delicious strawberry cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting. The Ottos (our new neighbors!) came over to enjoy it with us!

So delicious and moist!

New birthday boots! Rob picked them out for me and  I love them.

Rob always makes my birthdays fun and relaxing. He is the best.

This year was our very first time staying at home for Thanksgiving and making our own meal. It was perfect! It really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. We had a good time watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade, cooking together, and eating our delicious food with our fancy china. On the menu: delicious turkey (made by Rob), yams (my own crock pot creation), cranberry sausage stuffing (from Costco), mashed potatoes and gravy, garlic asparagus, strawberry dream jello salad, cranberry sauce, and Martinellis.

Watching the parade with kitty and daddy

Taking out the turkey

Our Thanksgiving family

Carving the turkey

Mmm.

This boy enjoyed it too.

We had our friends the Wallaces over for dessert, then spent the rest of the evening making our Black Friday game plan. It was a successful Thanksgiving! 

K & J Wedding

On the 19th was Katie and Justin's wedding in Tri-Cities. We headed up there the day before and spent some time with my family who had traveled there. We were the first to arrive in Tri-Cities, so we stopped by the temple for the first time since we'd been married there!

 When everyone showed up, we all had dinner at Granny's Buffet with Justin's family. My pictures from the whole weekend are random. . . so hopefully everyone else got good group pictures :)

Reuben and Dana with the gigantic ice cream cone

A niece and a nephew. . . Monica and Dillon

 The wedding was the next morning. My parents and all of their children were together in the temple for the first time. All my siblings are married now! It was a beautiful ceremony and it reminded me a lot of our wedding. Same room, and I believe it was the same sealer.

It was snowy

Mr. and Mrs. Whitehead

The luncheon was at the stake center and the reception was in Yakima. It was so much fun to see people I hadn't seen in so long. I think everything turned out really well and we all had a good time.

Green and pink candy centerpieces at the luncheon

Grandma Ness with Lindsey's boys Kyson and Dillon at the reception

Collin and his cousins Annika and Monica

The cake

Group shot: parents, siblings, and all but 2 of our spouses

Yay for Katie and Justin!