Christmas #2...

We drove to Ohio on Christmas morning to celebrate with Nate's family.  There's those bare feet again! I think Drew takes after his dad in his "dislike" of footwear. We've already donated numerous socks to Kroger and Target over the past few months:)

Opening gifts with Omi

Uncle Joe helped him rip open some gifts as well.

Playing with a new toy from his grandparents.

This picture is worth a thousand words:)

Nate's grandma, (Drew's great-grandma) was also able to be there on Christmas. Even though it was a quick visit, I'm so glad Andrew got to see everyone. 

Nate's mom made Drew this precious little stocking. 

And in between quilting stockings she made these amazing cookbooks for me and Kelsey. I can't imagine how much time it took, but she hand-wrote over 150 recipes for us and put them all together in a photo album with notes about each one. I call her about every other week to ask for a recipe and now I have them all in once place--the best gift ever! My favorite part is the picture of her on the front ala Betty Crocker!

We woke up Sunday morning and headed to church where Drew got to hear Nate's dad preach. He let out a few shrieks just to let everyone know he was there and got kissed by approximately 50 church ladies!

On the drive back to Louisville, we stopped at Dee Dee's family's Christmas celebration  (which worked out well since it was kind of the halfway point) where he met that whole side of the family. Thankfully, he conked out the whole drive back and so did I when we got home! I love Christmas but I need a breather this week!

Christmas #1

This might have been the busiest week of Christmas ever. We fit in so many visits with family and friends that it is all starting to blur together! 

We woke up to a white Christmas morning...perfect!

Christmas Eve, my parents had me and my sisters and their husbands over for breakfast and to exchange gifts, a.k.a. Christmas celebration #1.

 Drew got to open a few gifts and naturally was more interested in trying to eat the wrapping paper. We tried to keep it pretty low key as far as the gift-giving went. He's too young to understand presents anyway but he got some fun new toys and clothes from all of our generous family!

Spending some quality time with Grandpop.

Erin hardly ever put him down! We still couldn't figure out if he sometimes thought she was me, being twins and all but he certainly didn't seem to mind when she held him.

Opening his first stocking from his grandparents.

Another favorite place to hang out...right on Granna's lap.

Laura and Josh opening gifts.

Laura and Drew...his other favorite aunt. I didn't get many pictures of Christmas Eve night but my parents always host an open house. Erin, Mark, Josh, Laura, Nate and I all went to the Christmas Eve service at church first and then to my parents' house. It was kind of a whirlwind night but so much fun.

Nate and I put Drew to bed and exchanged our gifts. We usually only do one gift each year and try to  keep it small. Nate got some Smartwool socks from me (don't judge the boring nature of socks...he wanted them to hike in!) and he gave me a Wendell Berry illustrated book, The Mad Farmer Poems. Wendell Berry is my favorite author as Nate well knows. He is a Kentucky poet and writer, and I could literally read his poetry all day. He was one of my favorites to teach my students also so I was pretty happy with my gift.

We got up Christmas morning and packed up the car to head to Ohio for a visit that was too short, a.k.a. Christmas #2!

Some much needed friend time

A few days after Drew was born, my friend Mary from our Sunday school class brought dinner to our house. I'm sure that I had the I-just-had-a-baby-what-has-happened-to-my-life-oh-and-I-haven't-slept-in-days look. Mary has a 3 year old and had just had her second baby a couple months before Drew (and made it look so easy!) but she still found the time to bring us dinner. Since then, each Wednesday she has always organized a group of us girls to meet at the park, the library, or someone's house. It's a great setup: we get adult conversation and all the kids can play together! Spending time with these girls has truly been a blessing to me; honestly, sometimes I think, Oh, it's too much trouble to get everyone ready and out the door--I should be running errands or cleaning the house or being productive, etc. but on the days I'm able to go I am always glad I did.  I've enjoyed getting to know each of these women better each week!

All that to say, the week of Christmas, one of the girls, Emily, had us all over to her house to let the kids make cookies. Of course Drew was a bit young to participate this year but he got to play with Isaiah (Mary's little one) and I think he had fun.

I also got to spend time with some of my oldest friends this week as well. Mary, Amanda, Erin and I met for lunch at The Butterfly Garden Cafe, owned by our friend Emily from high school (second from right). If you live in Louisville and haven't eaten here, you need to go! First, it is in the most adorable old house and is beautiful inside (think old fireplaces, tall ceilings, etc.) and secondly, the food is nothing short of amazing. I'm not exaggerating when I say I ate probably the best salad I might have ever eaten here. It was great as always to spend time with some of my best friends and I haven't laughed that hard in awhile!

That night I had all of the friends from high school over to our house. Nate and Mark promptly headed over to the Irish Rover and left us girls with some time to catch up.

Photo with my sister:)

Rachel, Jess and Heather

Drew and Erin

Erin, Paige and I have been friends since the third grade. She lives in Colorado now so I only get to see her about once a year:(

Someone was supposed to be sleeping but didn't want to miss out!

Derby Pie Bars

It's a good thing I love my kitchen because I've been spending some serious quality time with it lately. With Christmas just a few days away, I've been baking and freezing all week long.  I just pulled these out of the refrigerator to take to my parents' house tonight:

 I found a recipe for pecan pie bars on allrecipes.com and adapted it to make them Derby Pie bars instead. Even though we are nowhere near Derby time in Kentucky, in my opinion, Derby pie is the perfect combination of chocolate and pecans and this recipe actually turned out great!

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/3 cup margarine
• 5 eggs
• 1 cup dark corn syrup
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 bag of milk chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Mix together flour and brown sugar. Soften the butter and margarine and stir it into the flour until it is a thick, crumbly mixture.
3. Press into a 9 x 13 inch pan and bake for 10 minutes at 350.
4. Combine remaining ingredients except pecans and chocolate chips and blend well. 
5. Stir in pecans and chocolate chips by hand. Pour over baked crust.
6. Reduce oven temperature to 275 degrees F. Bake 1 hour or until a thin crust has formed over the top. 
7. Let it cool completely before cutting into bars.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas...

I love that song. It is probably one of my favorite Christmas songs that I never get tired of. I love the line: "Through the years, we all will be together....if the fates allow..." That is always the line I think about when every year, for the last 7 or so, Nate and I have gone to our friends house, the Clems, for their annual Christmas party with our college friends.  How sentimental am I, really? But I get all nostalgic when I think of how long we have all been friends. This year was fun as always. Here's some photos of our weekend there:

A few of us met first at Woodford Reserve, a bourbon distillery, to take the tour. Gasp! We did indeed take our 6 month old on a bourbon tour but before anyone panics, it is more like the history of bourbon, old buildings, etc. And I love old buildings....bourbon, not so much. If you live in the Kentucky region, you might want to tour it sometime. Besides, it is surrounded by beautiful bluegrass farms and horses. The drive itself is worth it.

See what I mean? A photo op presented itself in front of an ancient copper pot. And the old brick walls....beautiful.

I have learned that the easiest form of entertainment is to put Drew in the baby carrier and just walk around. Therefore, the bourbon tour was perfect for letting him check out the world for a bit. Plus, he learned about the history of bourbon in Kentucky. What can I say, we like to provide educational opportunities whenever possible.

 Back at the Clems' house that night...Drew got to meet our friends Russ and Jess for the first time. Lindsey gave him his very first Christmas gift which he promptly ate.  She got him a metal sippy cup  and some cute little monkey rattles. I got kind of excited when I saw the cup. See, Lindsey is one of those people who is a fantastic gift giver. When we were shopping together about a month ago, she saw me eyeing a metal sippy cup (which I wanted because Drew throws everything on the floor and it has become obvious we need a cup that can take a beating) and remembered that said I liked it! She's good like that.

Kristy, Jess and me

It's a Christmas miracle! Russ, Nate and Steven are all smiling nicely for the picture!

This is just one of many Christmas celebrations that will be keeping us busy this week. I do love all the gatherings but when all is said and done, I might need a vacation from Christmas, otherwise known as the month of January. Does anything fun happen in January? I don't think it does.  Therefore, Nate and I will be working on the monumental task of finishing the basement. It has walls now! I'll be sure to do some before and after shots but here is a preview of what we've got as of this moment:

It's got a ways to go but we're getting there!

Blog Renovation

I changed up the blog a bit and am still working on it. First of all...the title is different, based on the name of our neighborhood, Crescent Hill. "Nate and Alison" was about as boring as you can get so that needed to go and Nate came up with the new title (about all he will probably contribute to the blog I think!).

Secondly, I'm going to try to commit to posting more often because, as I have said before, someday it will be nice to print out our blog and see what we were up to these past few years. There are lots more areas of our life I'd like to document and record (besides the obvious baby stuff) such as the continual renovation of our house, how our garden evolves each year (I swear every spring I can't remember where we planted stuff last year) and recipes/homemade ideas I'd like to keep.  Enjoy!

Pictures of Christmas

This will have to be a quick post because I'm afraid if I don't do it now it will move the the bottom of my continually growing "to-do" list. Just a few pictures of how we've been enjoying the Christmas season so far this year!

 Last week I had some girls over for a cookie exchange Christmas party...nevermind that we might have eaten half of what we wanted to take home!

Some of the girls I used to teach with came too.

Last night my parents and Laura came by for a quick dinner and then it was off to see Santa for the first time for Andrew!

He loves his Grandpop:)

And his Granna too!

We headed over to the Peterson Dumesnil House, a historic home in our neighborhood that was hosting a Christmas open house. It is also where Laura got married this past spring...minus the lovely pink coloring on the walls, it was all spruced up for Christmas!

Someone got a little sleepy waiting for Santa to make his appearance.

The "first time on Santa's lap" photo.

One more picture of cuteness!

6 Months and some reflections on being a parent

Andrew officially turned 6 months old the day after Thanksgiving, which I cannot believe. In many ways it feels like it's been 6 months since we brought him home and in other ways it's gone by so fast. Either way, there are many surprising aspects about being a parent. Since I don't have an official "baby book" for Drew, this blog will have to suffice and someday I'll get it all printed up and put into a nice book format. That being said, I want to record some of my thoughts here before I forget them.

Probably the most surprising aspect of being a parent is how much Nate and I love it. Doesn't that sound mean...that we are surprised by how much we enjoy it? In complete honesty, I was scared to death to become a mom! I don't always do well with life changes (or at least the anticipation of them) and having a baby is right up there with major life-changing events. Over the 9+ months of pregnancy, I worried a lot about completely pointless stuff,  most of it selfish (just being honest here). For 6 years, Nate and I had been married and our lives were ours. We slept in on Saturdays, ate out when we wanted, hung out with friends, traveled, hiked, etc. Was having a baby going to change all this "independence" we enjoyed? Of course!  But come one...people have been having kids for a gazillion years and of course I was worrying about silly little things.
For example, I do not function well unless I get 8 hours of sleep (I'm high maintenance in the sleep department) and we all know that the number one issue with a newborn is that no one sleeps! Then there was the issue of work. To work or not to work? Part time or full time? Daycare or in home childcare? Yikes! I made the decision to stay at home and thankfully, my school lets me work one day a week. But once again...another major life change! I'd taught high school for 6 years and, contrary to the impression many teachers give, I really loved my job and my students. It was not easy to leave that job and I had numerous "meltdowns" over the decision to do so.
And while we're being honest, moving from two salaries to one is no walk in the park either.  We've had to budget like crazy and I might need a 12 step program to break my addiction to coupon websites! But in the morning, when I go get our little guy out of his crib, he smiles at me so sweetly and all of the angst I felt over the job issue just disappears. How could I leave that little face every day? (FYI: I am in NO way implying that my working-mom friends didn't make a good decision...people should do what works for them and this was just mine and Nate's decision. Seriously, hats off to the working mothers out there because I know it is so hard to balance your time and energy with a job and family too.)
All of this to say, being a parent is now on the top of my list of amazing experiences. Nate and I have had so much fun with Andrew in so many ways. There's just no way to describe the love you have for your child...I can't put it into words. All of those fears I had during pregnancy have dissipated and now been replaced with fears not so much related to me but to Drew...the typical concerns all parents have of course. But if anything, being a mom has drawn the focus away from me and my petty, selfishness and directed it towards Drew and has also revealed to me a deeper understanding of the love of God as a Father.
Don't get me wrong; there have certainly been some sleepless nights as well as monotonous days when it feels like all I do is change diapers, clean up messes and do laundry. Nate and I have to plan ahead if we want to go out together and have had to change many aspects about our formerly free-spirited weekends and evenings, but I wouldn't trade any of it. Life has definitely changed in many ways but they are good changes. As I said before, it is surprising how much Nate and I love being parents and don't mind giving up some of those things; cliche as it may sound, we have gained so much more.

And now, for the six month stats:

• Weight: 16.5 pounds
• Height: 27 inches
• Milestones: sitting up mostly unassisted (but still working on balance), rolling all over the place like a little rolling pin, saying "mama" and other babbling sounds, waving hello when he's in the mood:)
• Eating: He has started on solids and now eats rice cereal, sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, and pears each day at breakfast, lunch and dinner. I've made his baby food which was actually so simple and we'll probably start green vegetables this week.
• Sleeping: Still sleeping from 7:30-7:30 for the most part and taking a 90 minute morning nap and a 90 minute afternoon nap.
• Loves: being outside, riding in the Baby Bjorn/baby carrier where he can check out the world, even if it is just a trip to the grocery store, baths, music of any kind, watching Nate do ANYTHING, trying to pet Sadie, chewing on anything he can find which reminds me that I need to do some serious baby-proofing of our house!
• His little personality is really emerging and it is so much fun!

 The token "baby food all over the face" photo