christmas cards

Merry Christmas from our family to yours! It was our first year sending out Christmas cards. I think having family pictures taken this year gave me the confidence I needed to go for it :) I'm such a perfectionist when it comes to stuff like this. Jeremy can tell you I designed about five different cards before coming up with this one. 

We ordered from mpix.com and while I was so very happy with the way they came out, I will admit the pearl finish probably isn't best for a card like this. It's so pretty but I felt it came off looking a little pixelated. Nothing awful though. And my other lesson learned was if you're putting a border around your own design (as opposed to a predesigned layout on a printing website) be wary that they  may be cropped a little funky and not how they looked in the preview! 

All in all though, so happy! I'm looking forward to carrying on this Christmas card tradition for many years to come :) 

for the sake of documentation: christmas sunday pictures

^^ I was setting up the self-timer for a group picture when this happened. 

And my heart was all "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" ^^

^^ Someone's in that "smile so big you look like a pig" phase right now :) 

One of those this we'll just forget if we don't save it somewhere ^^

^^ For once this cute boy didn't want to smile, 

he only wanted to "talk" :) Still so cute! ^^

This certainly won't go down in the books as one of my best photoshoots. It's a sad day when you realize at the end you've been shooting at 800 ISO that whole time............ *sigh* At least it was at home with my kids ;) I picked a bad time to plop our family in front of the Christmas tree. But, hey, we got a group shot for Christmas 2014. I'll take it :) 

simple celebration

^^ You'd better believe we stole a kiss under that thing! ^^

^^ Kind of hard to tell, but that's two paint cans an an iron :) Name that movie.... ^^

^^ She was in awe the whole time... ^^

While we did want to keep our anniversary simple, I was game for any plan that involved getting out of the house and any excuse to avoid doing dishes ;) We tried out a Mediterranean restaurant in Federal Hill (Babas - very tasty!) and swung by 34th street in Hamden to see the spectacular lights. It's great to live in a city with so much character.

Stephanie Nielson posted a picture of their family around a birthday cake a few days ago. The caption read, "Happy birthday to our family! We are 14 years old today!!" I feel like that's what we did the other night. We celebrated the birth of our family AS a family. It won't always be that way. There are plenty of romantic dates for two in our future, and I'm sure looking forward to them! But for here and now, four years into this adventure, we went out together, the four of us.

I hope as our kids grow they remember the importance of our marriage, not only for us, but for them! I hope they know and understand the significance of where it happened. And I hope that each year on December 18th they remember that sacred event that happened once upon a time.

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