Christmas Card Extras & Prayer Request

I thought I'd post a few of the good pictures we got during our Christmas card shoot. The two of Sophie are two of my favorite pictures, and the two of Micah are some of our ONLY pictures of him. Just kidding, but really - it's totally true that you don't take as many pics of your 2nd child. I now feel bad for giving my mom grief since I am the 2nd child. I can totally relate to what she was experiencing. I can only imagine w/ 4+ kids...

Anyway, I also wanted to ask for prayer for us as I'll be having a heart catheter ablation procedure done on Wednesday. It's a very non-invasive procedure where they go through the leg up through the veins into the heart to try to electrically burn the spot that is causing my heart to beat incorrectly. So hopefully (and prayerfully) this will fix things and we'll be good to go for the future. I've just had a pretty significant arrhythmia that is gradually weakening my heart muscle so the doctors think it's best to give this a whirl. Thank you for your prayers - that God will guide the doctor, but most importantly that He will use us in the lives of those on staff at the hospital to proclaim His name for His glory.

January 2011 - Happy New Year!

And here we are in 2011. Micah is 5 months old and doing great. He's a super happy baby and just an all-around joy to be with. His tummy issues are fine and he's growing well. We haven't started any cereal or food yet - I've been putting it off. And he seems fine without it, but I'm sure we'll give it a try soon.



Sophie is also a joy as she's leaving babyhood and toddlerhood behind, and now is more of a crazy friend that I get to hang out with everyday. She has an amazing imagination - every five minutes she's pretending to be someone different, and Micah, Erik & I also get to play vital roles in her world of make-believe. Sometimes I have trouble remembering which of her friend's moms (or dads!) I'm supposed to be at the moment. And for a solid week I was Sully from Monsters Inc. It's so fun to have Erik home in the evenings and to see the two of them interacting. She definitely loves her daddy.

Virginia Christmas

We finished our grand Christmas tour with a few days at my parents' house in VA. We had a great time with Bubby and Laura and Papa and Gran. Aaron and Laura hadn't yet met Micah, so that was fun...I'm sure he'll never forget it. Again, not a lot of pics of this week, and a few of the ones I have I stole from Laura's facebook page.

Sophie drowning in a sea of my old stuffed animals - which my parents are slowly sending to our house. First it was one at a time, but now that Micah's here they seem to think they can get away with sending them in twos. Not a fan of this. I mean, don't get me wrong - they have great sentimental value as most of them were given to me by my father. But I love for that sentimental value to stay in my old house, where we can enjoy it when we visit.

Sophie modeling her (and my) new presents

Sophie & Papa

Handing out presents

Aaron and Laura have been threatening to give Sophie a sandbox for awhile now, but we were THRILLED to find, not a sandbox (which I hate), but a great basketball goal for the kiddos. Sophie was really sad when she found out it had to go outside and couldn't stay in our living room permanently.

Sweet Bubby love...when he and Laura were leaving Sophie attached herself to his leg and wouldn't let him leave. She has great aunts and uncles - we're so blessed!

Tennessee Christmas

On Christmas Eve we had our first ever family Christmas - just the four of us at home. It was...interesting. Sophie had just 2 presents from us and 2 from other people to open. But she opened the first one from us (Toy Story figurines, pictured below) and then refused to open any other gifts. REFUSED. To the point of tears. What kind of child refuses to open presents? So after much frustration we convinced her to open the rest, and of course she was so glad she did. But we figure we can always tell her this is why she'll only get 1 present in the future.

Oblivious Micah...chillin' on the floor

I didn't get any pics at Erik's granny's house, where we went for Christmas day. It's difficult getting pictures these days - both of us normally have our hands full with a child. So unfortunately this year was not well recorded. But we take what we can get. After Granny's we traveled to Strawberry Plains, TN for the Sandberg family Christmas. It was a fun 2 days with lots of family, and the kids got plenty of love and attention.

I have a feeling this picture will make appearances for years to come

Great Papa gettin' down

Gigi was really excited about one of her presents - priceless reaction

More present excitement

And...not so excited. Lighten up, guys...it's Christmas!

Prattville Christmas

Well since I'm over a month behind on this one, I'll keep it short and sweet. We normally go down to Erik's parents' the 2nd weekend of December for a Christmas/Erik's birthday weekend celebration. This year everyone was there except for Jen and Pete. At the time, Jen was in Haiti treating cholera (and trying to get out of the country due to rioting) and Pete was playing a wedding in Charleston. We had a great time, but definitely missed Aunt Jenny and Uncle PeeWee.

Our best Christmas present

Sophie trying out her new Buzz Lightyear car - Thanks Pops!

Sophie admiring the table - and waiting for people to join her already

Gigi and "the Mooks"

Sophie experienced Twister for the first time - you can't tell here, but she loved it

Erik Guest Posts - A Christmas Miracle

A Christmas peacock with ornate drool jacket included.

Mullet the Elf.

A Magnum P.I. Christmas.

Sophie applying jagged glass shards to the grandparents' ornaments.

I'm Sophie the Child. Bon Apetit!

To earn Christmas cash we've been selling Gingerbread Man's organs on the black market.

One nation, under garments, indivisible...

25 hyperventilation bags to deal with holiday stress. Only 3 left...Yikes! Make that 2.

Catherine does a lovely job decorating our house each year. But who is Manuel?

Christmas Card Joy

So it's that time again - Christmas card picture time. And this year we had the fun experience of trying to get a sweet, genuine smile out of Sophie. This is no simple feat, people. Let me share with you some of the many "outtakes" from our picture-taking session (thanks to Amber, who snapped these gems for us):






As you can see, not exactly the easiest task in the world. But if we CAN find a winner, the rest is a cinch, thanks to a great program from Shutterfly. Bloggers can get 50 free Christmas cards from their company this year. And since I love their products and have used them in years past, this is a no-brainer. So here's a little advertisement for Shutterfly products, because I was seriously considering not doing cards this year. But when they're free it's hard not to :).

So first let's talk about their cards - seriously so cute. I love that there are so many options - greatly diminishing the chances of sending the same one as a friend (which, let's be honest, isn't exactly the end of the world).

I also totally love their photo books - we've done one of these every year for Sophie and will do the same for Micah. Scrapbooking was taking too much time and just not realistic for this stage of our lives, but I wanted to have something for Sophie to have as she gets older. So these are the perfect solution. And they're great because they don't take up a lot of space and she can look at them now, which she loves doing.

Finally, we never really have Christmas parties, but whenever I see cute invitations, I totally want to have one just so I can send some out. If anyone wants to send me an invitation to something (I don't even have to come - I just want the invitation), I would be so grateful if it's this cute.

So there you have it - shameless promotion of a company with some great products. And if you get a Christmas card from us, just know that I didn't buy it, but I still love you :)

Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly: http://bit.ly/sfly2010