Merry Christmas!

I love Christmas time, there are so many fun things to do, eat and see. This past weekend we went up to visit Reid's family and we made gingerbread houses, which is one of my favorite traditions, it was great.

Then last night, we went down to Santa Fe where they have a big Christmas Eve party. In the old part of town with all the nice art galleries they shut some of the streets down and you can just walk around and look at all the lights and go into the galleries. It was so much fun, they had bonfires on the street to keep you warm and hot chocolate everywhere.



Our big present for Brooke this year, was this kitchen set that Reid made her. She loves it and also loves the pans her grandma got her to go with it.

We've had such a fun Christmas this year, I hope you guys have all enjoyed it as well. Merry Christmas!

Cookie Bake!

I went to my very first cookie bake! It was super fun! There were so many different kinds of cookies it was great. I made raspberry almond thumbprint cookies and lemon cake mix cookies. But my favorite cookie by far, was a chocolate chip cookie dough (made without eggs) and then covered in chocolate and cooled in the freezer, yumm it was so good!

Happy or Sad

Reid and I love these pictures, because they were all taken within about 30 seconds. So, they totally show the rapidly changing ball of emotions that is Brooklin (and probably most toddlers).

Holiday Light Parade

We love our little town! For such a small town they have a lot of activities and events and it is a very close community. This past weekend was the Holiday Festival, where they had a ton of different things going on. We had a lot of fun at the Light Parade, even though it was freezing and as you can tell by my wacky hair a little windy.

Christmas Card

These are some of the pictures we took for our Christmas card.

Happy Pie Day!

Wow! That's a lot of pies! I couldn't even fit them all on the table, so there were at least 3-4 more that I didn't get in the picture. Happy Holidays!

Bandelier

This weekend, we went up to Bandelier National Park for a little morning hike. There are a lot of very cool Anasazi (Ancient Pueblo People) ruins. I especially loved seeing all the different petroglyphs.

Brooke had fun hiking and seeing all the different animals that were around. She loved the deer, she just stared and stared, she thought they were very cool. Reid liked the deer as well, he just wished he'd had a bow and arrow handy (JK).

Happy Halloween

We bought this bear costume online. We thought it was very cute, but people seemed to have a hard time figuring out what she was. We had people ask if she was a cow, a monkey, a chipmunk, and a dog. Oh well, we think she was cute and the costume was a little big so she might be a bear in the years to come as well.

Brooke loved eating the candy! I think she might really get into this Halloween thing!



At first, Brooke was a little confused by everything. But by the end of the night she was running around in her costume having a ball. She especially loved answering the door for trick-or-treaters and seeing all the costumes.

Jack-o-Lantern

Snow!

On Saturday, we bought a new camera. It's a little ridiculous to me how complicated cameras are, I swear I don't know what half the buttons do. It's a lot nicer than our old camera though, so hopefully I won't drop it down a mountain anytime soon.

On Sunday, when we got home from church it started to snow. So we had to go outside and play in the first snowfall of the year. It didn't stick to the ground here, but we went for a drive up the mountain and it was definitely sticking there. Brooke had so much fun playing in the snow. She just ran around trying to catch the snowflakes. When we made her go inside, she just stood by the window and watched the snow, while we made dinner.

Frijoles Canyon

Yesterday, we went on this gorgeous hike in Bandelier National Park. We hiked down Frijoles Canyon (cool name huh?) to see these two water falls. It was such a fun hike and it was so beautiful. We took lots of pictures but unfortunately when I was leaning down to take a picture of one of the water falls I dropped our camera and we sadly stood by as our camera crashed down the side of the canyon bouncing from rock to rock. So, it might be a while before we post more pictures. But I did find a few pictures online of the canyon and the hike we went on.

We're Here!

After a long three day drive, we finally made it to New Mexico. Sorry it took me so long to get these things posted but in all the moving I couldn't find the cord to the camera and we just got our internet hooked up. So here are a few pictures to let you all know that we made it and will be happy if we never move again (I always forget what a pain it really is). We're finally here! This is Brooke and Reid's celebratory dance now that we're kind of unpacked and kind of settled in our new home.

Mount Vernon

The drive out to Mount Vernon (George Washington's home) was so beautiful! I've never seen downtown D.C. from across the Potomac like that, it was great! We thought we could just spend a couple of hours at Mount Vernon in the morning, but once we got there we realized how much there was to do and ended up spending the whole day there.

How would you like this view from your backyard?

There was a very nice museum about George Washington. This picture of Brooke and Amber is of George Washington's step-grandkids. It was fun to learn a little more information about him. By the way in case any of you were wondering he never had wooden teeth, most of his dentures were actually made out of lead.

Bears!

We took Reid's family to the Boyd's Bear farm out here. It is a GIANT teddy bear store, with three floors and different "exhibits", it is quite the place. Amber loved it and would barely let her new bear out of her sight the rest of the week.
This bear was huge, I think Brooke was afraid it was going to eat her.

DC

The week before we moved, Reid's family came out for a visit. It was fun to be able to see some of the cool things in D.C. and around this area one last time. I absolutely love D.C., it is definitely one of my favorite cities. There is so much history and so many things to do I wish we had had more time to spend there.
There was some kind of foreign dignitary at the white house while we were there. We couldn't tell who it was, but security was all over, and you could definitely tell something was going on.Reid's parents, his sister Amber and his brother Tyson ( I don't know why he wasn't in this picture) all came out to visit and check out the East coast.


Every time I go to Arlington I am overwhelmed by the sacrifices of so many people. It is truly a poignant place.