Christmas in Connecticut

For Christmas this year Mike and I went to Connecticut to spend the holiday with my sister and her family. We love visiting Laura and Brandon, we always have a great time hanging out and playing with the boys. Christmas is Mike's and my favorite holiday and this year it was even better with Jackson. We feel so lucky to have him as a part of our family, we can't imagine life without him!

We have a tradition that on Christmas Eve we get to open our Christmas pajamas from Grandma and Grandpa. This year I was in Utah and helped Grandma pick them out :)

Christmas morning

Cousin Preston- He is so stinkin' cute in his hat!

We had such a great time playing in Connecticut! Thanks Laura for letting us come!!

Too cute

For some reason Jackson loves changing his clothes. He thinks its especially funny when I pull his arms out of his shirt. If I get really lucky, I can get a good laugh out of him. Today Mike was home when I put his pajamas on and we were able to get his super cute laugh on camera. I love hearing him laugh, it's the best sound in the world!

Catching up..

Ok, I know, I know... I haven't blogged in awhile. Actually I can't even claim that I have blogged once, since Mike wrote our first post. However, I really want to be better about posting what is going on in our family. So here is the first of many posts to come!

Having Jackson in our family has been the most wonderful experience! He is such a sweet little boy and we feel so blessed to have him in our family. These first months with Jackson have been filled with lots of sleeping (on Jackson's part anyway...), eating, and diapers. As I was looking through the pictures that we have of Jackson the vast majority of them are ones where he is sleeping, but for a newborn I guess thats pretty typical. Here are a few of my favorites:

When Jackson was born Mike and I were so lucky to have my Mom come and stay with us. It was so nice to have her here and help us adjust to being parents. Jackson loved snuggling with Grandma!

Last month our family was able to go to Utah to bless Jackson and introduce him to our family. It was so great to go back home and see everyone. Jackson loved meeting his many aunts, uncles, and cousins. I wish that I had gotten more pictures of our trip, thankfully my sister in law Becky is a shutterbug :) Here are a few pictures of the baby blessing, thanks Becky!

After coming back from Utah, we spent a few days at home before heading down to my sisters house in Connecticut for Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for this year. It was so wonderful to sit back and think of all the ways our family has been blessed in the past year, we feel very humbled. My sister did an amazing job making Thanksgiving dinner, unfortunately we didn't take any pictures :( That weekend my sister even volunteered to watch Jackson for an evening so that Mike and I could sneak out for a date, thanks Laura!!

After coming home from Connecticut, Jackson and I were only home for a few days before heading off to Nashville to visit my sister Tonia and her family. My sweet new niece Addison came 12 weeks early and is in the NICU. I was lucky to be able to go and help out my sister so that she could spend more time at the hospital with Addison. Jackson loved playing with Avery and Avery was able to get in some big sister practice. She was a great babysitter, every time I would walk out of the room Avery would go find Jackson and stay with him until I came back. She also loved to bring him toys, bottles, and binkies; she is going to be a great big sister! Thank you for letting us come, it was so great to be with you and play with Avery. We are praying that Addision will be home soon!!

Now that we are home, we are trying to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully in a few days we will readjust to our schedule. Jackson is getting so big, he smiles all the time and tries really hard to talk, it's so cute!! He is working on rolling over- he did it once, but I think it was more of an accident than something he meant to do. Here are some of my favorite recent pictures :)

Whew!! That was a long post... I might need some chocolate to recover :) Mom, I promise to post more often!