Happy New Year!!!

Better late than never, right :)

We had an enjoyable NYE because we decided to have people to our house. That translates into the fact that Megan could go to bed on time in her own bed and we could still enjoy ourselves. The Bozemans and Bradleys came over with their crews and the girls all had a blast while we enjoyed a semi-adult New Year's Eve celebration. Everyone was impressed that the little ones lasted so long and almost to midnight; they all left at 11:30. Anna was wiped and asleep just in time for Matt and I to watch the ball drop. It was a very fun night and we loved celebrating with all of the kids. They had party favors (appropriately Elmo themed), root beer floats, and lots of energy. They were so cute!

This last picture was taken by the most qualified person left after this group was formed, 4 year old Taylor. She did a nice job :)

Christmas Slide Show
(Sorry for the large amount of pictures. I had a difficult time eliminating.)

Snow Days

These pictures are too funny. Until you have dressed a toddler for the snow, you cannot truly appreciate the snowsuit in The Christmas Story.

Finishing a night of sled riding with some pizza.

Megan's First Christmas

Christmas is definitely up there as one of the most wonderful times of the year so don't you wish you could spend it with a sweet baby every year? It seems we're making it a tradition in our family to do just that :)

Megan's first Christmas was a great one. Since she's almost one, it was a really fun age because she could crawl around and get excited about all the decorations. She loved checking out ornaments and pushing the button on our singing snow man. She enjoyed pulling wrapping paper and eating the cardboard boxes. She wanted to pull herself up on Christmas trees. We decided the pulling up thing would be a problem so we moved our tree to the basement this year which actually turned out quite nice. We may continue that tradition. Here our some great pictures of sweet Megs enjoying some holiday cheer!

Christmas card shots.

Decorating the Christmas tree.

Practicing for a sled ride.

A "balleriba" dress for Megan's first ChristmasWaiting for her first Wigilia ("Va-geel-ya" Polish Christmas Eve dinner)

More fun UNDER the table.

Finding the shopping cart from Santa.

So tiny that this is the same outfit Anna wore on her first Christmas at 5 months!

Anna's Christmas Fun

I absolutely love making memories around "events" and this Christmas, we worked really hard to squeeze a lot of those in. It was much easier to make that happen for Anna if we took only her and left Megan behind. Megan's just at a difficult age because she wants to get into everything and isn't too content sitting in a stroller. We didn't feel so bad leaving her out knowing that she didn't have a clue anyway. (I'm really looking forward to next year when it will be perfect to celebrate everything with both the girls.)

Baking cookies at Grandma's - This was during a Bengals home game. I took the girls over and laid Megan down early for nap and the three of us "big" girls baked Christmas cookies. Anna couldn't stand the excitement knowing that she could eat them when she woke up from her nap.

Southern Lights in Lexington - This has become a Blaze family tradition ever since our days began on campus at UK. We start out with dinner at Cracker Barrel down the road from the Horse Park and then head over to drive through the lights and go to the petting farm. Anna checking out the lights by kneeling on her car seat and holding onto Baw Baw's seat.

"Getting the Feel" of the ponies.

Sometimes I think Uncle Andrew gets more excited about the petting zoo than the kids.

This picture turned out hysterical. I have no idea what this weird creepy animal is, but I was a mean mom and made Anna take her picture with it because I thought it was hilarious that a) it looked like a cross between a llama and a lion and b) that Anna was so scared of it (rightfully so). The best part of this picture is that our camera is terrible when capturing eyes so this thing's eyeball looks like it's straight out of a Lord of the Rings movie or something.

Jonathan, Shelby, Andrew and I help decorate the Christmas tree.

Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo - A perfect night, not too terribly cold. We enjoyed as much as we could that would also appeal to a two year old. This included pizza, a train ride and a gingerbread man cookie.

Fun family night culminating with a fantastic Anna quote that has become our favorite: We grabbed a hot chocolate and coffee as we were leaving. On the way home, Matt cranked up the Christmas music and was singing quite loudly for fun. As he was belting out "O Holy Night" in his best choir voice, we hear a tiny voice call out from the back seat in between gingerbread man bites "Hey Daddy! Drink. Your. Coffee!" Soooo funny. We were rolling in laughter.

Jesus is the Reason for the Season

Obviously the month of December and into the New Year was pretty busy for us - as it is for everyone. (Hence the lack of posts.) We had so much fun this year preparing for Christmas with Anna being the sweet age of 2 and of course celebrating Megan's first Christmas.

Anna found an affection for Nativities this year. We set ours up and she was very interested in checking out the shepard and the camel and looking at Mary getting ready to hold her precious baby. She then became very excited every time we drove somewhere and she had the opportunity to look for "Marewee, Jofish and Baby Jesus." It was always a treasured moment for me to hear her screaming from the back seat, "Mommy, another Baby Jesus!!!" It was a gentle reminder that we all should be so excited to see, and even search, for another Baby Jesus among the crazy secular materialism that our culture has created in Christmas.

Having a two year old this year forced us to focus first on Jesus' Birthday. We explained that Santa was friends with Baby Jesus and that Jesus wanted him to help deliver presents to everyone to celebrate his birthday. Surpisingly, we think Anna "got it". She knew we were celebrating a birthday complete with birthday cake and presents.

We made some fun stops at a few Nativities around town including the Cincinnati tradition at Krohn's Conservatory and a new experience for us at the Comboni Mission Center in Beechmont. They have a beautiful miniature Bethlehem set up with animation and an audio story teller. Anna really loved it and probably loved running up and down the hallways a little more.