photo recap

we had a wonderful Christmas. we were blessed to spend time with much of our family and that included a week with carla, grace and cooper. the kids loved every second of the time together and only one thing was missing.....ed. ed has a few more months in afghanistan and his return home can't come soon enough.

starting with Christmas eve, at mom's. mom made an awesome dinner that was a duplicate of Thanksgiving. my most favorite meal.

here buxton is saying "can we open presents already!"

elin received a new trike from mom and bill. she loooooves it. it's a schwinn and the steering mechanism for the parents is the best i've seen.

we hosted the smith family at our house on Christmas day...it was too crazy to take pics! but 2 days later we went to howdy and doris' for a get together with all the cousins. lots of picture`s were taken!

all the cousins except one (buxton, hunter, elin, grace, lakes, cooper and rivers -brooks is missing):

the girl cousins:

the cousins and the grandparents:

here is sweet cooper the day they went home to KY:

and grace and elin in their matching dresses that carla bought in Italy this summer during their family trip. these are handmade by a woman who owned a little clothing shop near a place where they stayed. what an awesome gift! elin was pretty sick with RSV in this pic (we didn't know it yet), but she is finally well now.

we are looking forward to a great 2012!

ho ho ho

here is our picture from the annual Circa Interiors photo with an old fashioned santa event. it's so awesome they do this and i love the pics we get each year. so much better than the mall santa.

so thankful for november

this is our "thankfulness tree", where we wrote things we are thankful for on the leaves and added as regularly as we could. i did this to try to get buxton to grasp the holiday a bit, and i do think he caught on a little. but mostly he was always thankful for his toys!

this thanksgiving we were able to "pay forward" some of the blessings we have in our life by helping the less fortunate through our family business. ben put his heart, sweat and tears into making this event as successful as it was and i have never been so proud of him and felt so honored to be married to this amazing man.

we fed about 100 people at twin tops from 11-3 on thursday and it was traditional thanksgiving food, with some amazing fried zucchini thrown in for good measure. the people came from all sorts of places and most were brought to us by a local church we partnered with. they were able to come in and sit down, be served drinks, as much hot food as they wanted, and help themselves to clothes, blankets and other items that were collected as they left. we had so much food that a run was made to the salvation army afterwards where many more were fed. it's always better to have more than you need than run out!

it was an awesome experience. and what made it even richer is that so many of our family and friends came to help.

here are some of the servers (L to R: blair craig (friend of ben's), andrew (one of our food distributors and a big part of this event), blair's dad, my step-dad #2, bill, cherie (bill's sister), my mom, blair's mom:

more help that focused on the food (L to R): (ben's step-dad's brother and his wife), jimmy (ben's step-dad), uncle jimmy (ben's uncle, and the father of our cousin courtney that kept the kids during all this), mitch (a friend), howdy (ben's dad) and ben!

santa even made a visit and let the kids get their pictures made with him. i printed the pics on site so they could take them home.

this "kid" on his lap is santa's mother, and she is so sweet that i wanted to take her home. really i did.

oh and this santa will be at twin tops many weekend nights in december for free pictures printed on site!

this is ben's mom, who made some yummy food for the event, and his sweet grandma.

reverend june and pastor curry, from the church we partnered with, presented a plaque to ben for his hard work and making this happen. it was so sweet and emotional for many of us!

me and my mama. mom made an organic turkey (at my request), oyster dressing and giblet gravy for our family meal together after we served everyone. i love her so much for that!

this past weekend we had a nice family day on sunday. after church we went to the park and hoped for elin to do some walking. this is the same park where buxton took his first many steps and i happen to catch it all on film. but elin wasn't having it (although she has taken 4 steps in a row at home). so i just focused on getting some cute pics:

october rocked our socks off

and speaking of socks, check out our awesome outfits (due to the socks amy bought for us) of "team patwa" for the annual charlotte race for the cure. i love you wc girls!

amy's outfit this year was super duper and fit her so well.

during october, we put up fun decorations in the yard, wore pretty orange outfits,

and other pretty outfits that were gifts last year and just now fit!

we spent time outdoors, giving our pets QT and enjoying the warm october sun.

we hit a couple pumpkin patches,

where i got a couple good photos of these 2:

we've done a lot of art at the easel. elin pretends to color and buxton fills an entire page with color in the matter of minutes.

we went to a few fall festivals, and took advantage of the face painting:

we've had some down time with all the "under the weather-ness" that's been going around,

had some funny time,

and have had some sweet time.

shots of these 2 will never be what i'm hoping for when taking the pictures, but that is probably what makes them the most fun:

got some mommy and baby pics after church one day:

here is bob the builder:

and tinkerbell (with 3 top layers for warmth!):

looking forward to a very meaningful and full november.