Under The Christmas Tree: What A Difference A Year Makes

As my friend Alison put it "to think....last year she came in a picture frame".

Click here to see last years post!

And take a look below at this weird coincidence....the same 2 ornaments are just about in the same position on the Christmas tree that they were last year!!!! The red bear paw print & the white ball ornament. I JUST noticed that while posting these pics.
Is that the weirdes thing???? I swear it was in no way planned.

Mushy Tushy

Marnie had a nice warm bath & then we went into her room to get dressed. While I was busy getting her diaper & pj's out she sat on the floor & hung out. Good girl, right? Well...I guess I took too long getting ready & taking pics...she pee'd on the floor.
Whoopsie! Oh well. I got some cute pics though!!!

Blizzard 2010

Blizzard 2010 is going on & John keeps asking "When can we bring Marnie out to play in it?". It was like 10 degrees out with the wind chill!!! Ahaha. So just so Marnie could see the snow come down we ventured out onto the front porch for a couple of minutes and let me tell you...it was collllld!
Look how neat the pics look though with the snowflakes coming down.

Goin Mobile..Keep Me Movin

It's official. Miss M is now a crawler! Here & there she's been making small little strides at crawling but on Christmas day is really when she made it from one end of the carpet to the other. Now she is all over the place! Click here to watch a small tidbit of her getting her crawl on!

Christmas Day

This year John & I hosted Christmas Day at our house with my side of the family and Big G & since it was our first official Christmas as a 'real' family we wanted to make it extra special. So we decided to have a fancy 5 course meal prepared souly by us! I think everyone had a really nice time & I KNOW Mom had a great day (because she has told me several times that she did...I think she is trying to hint that John & I do it again next year...).
Marnie got tons of new toys & clothes and cousins Kaelyn & Maddie each bought Marnie something special with their own money. How sweet is that?





Poppy came over in his new t-shirt Marnie got him!

"Pop Pop Rules"


Marnie got her hands on poor Grandpa's hair...

John got his usual Quaker Creek steaks!

Tortilla say's "Me likey!"

Marnie's turn to open a present...which one does she pick?

The special gift from Uncle Brian that he picked out himself & wrapped in JETS wrapping paper! *rolling my eyes*

My 3 girls (btw- that's whipped cream on Marnie's lip...bad Aunt Robyn!)

Dad's sister, Aunt Cindy, sent all of us Otterbein girls scarves that she made herself.

How thoughtful was that???

As a joke I had matching t-shirts made for everyone that had Mom's mug on them...here are Mom & Dad's.

"This is me" & "This is my wife"

Here's Marnie's!

"This is my Grandma"

Our First Family Christmas

Although Marnie is still too young to know what Christmas is really about, I do believe she knew it was a special day. We got up early as a family (we let Marnie sleep in bed with us so we could all wake up together) and went downstairs to open Marnie's presents by the tree with a warm cozy fire going. She really loved tearing off the wrapping paper & playing with her toys. She also loved watching Tortilla & Mylee open their presents too! John & I waited until later that night after Marnie went to sleep to open our gifts to each other. It was an absolutely wonderful day & we loved every minute of it.

Here's Santa's cookies & milk that we put out on Christmas Eve


Christmas morning!

Marnie's Handy Manny laptop

Puppies get presents!

John got Marnie a special gift: Mickey & Minnie stuffed animals AND tickets for the three of us to go see Disney on Ice!

WHAT A GREAT DAD!!!!!

Merry 1st Christmas Marnie! XO

Christmas Eve

3:00pm on Christmas Eve we headed over to Grammy & Grampy's house for some apps and to wait for the arrival of Santa! Can you believe he made a pit stop at their house before heading out to deliver all the gifts before Christmas morning?? Poor Marnie was really tired since we had her off her normal nap schedule..thus, all the binky shots.
Later on that evening we headed over to Tracey & Tom's for our annual family gathering.
Miss M was a trooper & hung with us old folks as we exchanged gifts & hung out.

Our time at Fox Street:







"Heeyyyy, waaaaaait a minute. You look like somebody I know...."

Group shot of the kids with Santa:

Notice Claire is crying & scared sh*tless, Jack has his cookies & is over the whole Santa thing, Madeline is posing for the pics like a lovely little lady & Marnie has no idea what is going on. Hysterical!!!!

Grammy & Grampy..I mean Santa!

Our time at Szost Drive:

We made Michael & Paula put their $5 t-shirts on that we had made for them.

Everyone got a scarf for answering a Christmas trivia question...including Miss M.

And here is an upclose pic of Grammy & my little Granny. Doesn't she look like an old lady holding onto her shawl?