Baby's First Christmas

Honestly, I'm just glad I survived the holidays this year! With the baby, Zach traveling for residency interviews, starting work again... it was a lot jam packed into December. But, we made it! And we had some fun doing it. We love our family time and it was even better with the little one. 

Em did so awesome seeing Santa. We went to The Landing and luckily there was absolutely no one in line for Santa! That was one of the things I was dreading about going to see Santa... waiting in line for over an hour does not sound at all appealing to me with a four month old. But Santa was SO nice. He was smitten with Emerson, too. Since there was no one behind us in line, he took his time holding her after the pictures were taken. He said he had four kids in college and missed having little ones around. So cute! 

Our favorite little present.

She mastered her "Hungry Tiger" face. I love it. She does it all. the. time. I think that's how she tries to laugh, but no sound comes out!

Someone got a little spoiled.

Me and my little Mini Me.

One of our weekly pics... I just love this one!

 

Christmas baby selfie!

 

Hanging out with GG!

 

Conquering the art of present-opening.

We continued our annual tradition of driving around to look at Christmas lights and opening our stocking gifts (and ornaments) to each other. I love this tradition! It's our first Christmas tradition that was between just the two of us when we got married. I love our families, but I also love this time we get just the two of us to exchange our small gifts and ornaments. This year we brought Em along (of course, although she was asleep the whole time), got our coffee ready and headed over to Ballard to the Olympic Manor neighborhood. We'd gone there a few years ago and it was awesome - the whole neighborhood is lit up! After driving around and giving our critiques, we pulled over and exchanged gifts - I got Zach a cell phone charger dock and a coffee mug with pictures of Em (from Shutterfly - awesome!) and he got me two silicone baking mats and a sweet coffee tumbler. Em and I made our ornaments this year (two actually) - salt cookie ornaments with her hand and foot prints (he loved). He got me one with boots, one big pair and one small pair that says "like mother like daughter." I love it!

We picked out Em's first Christmas tree from this awesome farm - Zach cut it down while Em and I supervised. As you can tell, she wasn't very enthused.

We had a great Christmas filled with lots of card playing, food, laughs and family time (with a little bit of rough sleeping nights thrown in). Overall, it was an awesome Christmas!