O' Christmas Tree

Finally busted out some of our Christmas decor this morning and Scott helped me hang the lights and decorate the tree!  So here is the ACTUAL tree that is in our apartment (see post below).  At least it has the great smell, and it is small enough that it can sit on a little dresser and I don't have to worry about Scott destroying it every day.

Of course, everything goes straight to the mouth.  I'm going to find glitter in this boy's diaper for weeks.

Our little tree overlooks NYC.  Love this time of year!

Winter's Eve: A night in the city

Last night was NYC's 13th annual Winter's Eve.  The night starts with a tree lighting in front of the Lincoln Center and continues with food sampling, performances, shops, and Santa!  About 10 blocks of fun!  We decided to check it out.

The temple is directly across from the Lincoln Center and the missionaries were out front distributing free hot chocolate and singing Christmas carols.  We decided to sneak inside and let the babies crawl around for a minute and give our backs a rest.  Macy, Scott and Hudson.  These kids love each other!

Santa was at Brooks Brothers.  I wonder what Scott told him he wants for Christmas...

Santa insisted that I sit on his lap as well... I was kinda creeped out, but figured I'd be a good girl.  Good thing I already got my Christmas present!  Happy Winter's Eve!

Cutting down our Christmas Tree...kinda

I have always wanted to take a trip to the mountains to cut down my own Christmas tree.  Seems like it would be a lot easier to do that in Arizona.  Instead, I waited until I moved to NYC to fulfill this dream of mine (sorta).  We rented a big van, loaded up the babies, strollers, rope and coats and headed north out of the city to Connecticut.  We drove about 2 hours to the Jones Family Farm (after a couple pit stops to eat lunch and feed babies).  The grounds were gorgeous!  Christmas trees everywhere!  Trees covered the hills that surrounded a little lake. 200 ACRES of trees.  From huge trees to little baby trees just sprouting.  We searched for the perfect trees, then hacked away!

This is the tree we decided to "pose" by.  Can you picture this beauty in my apartment?  It was as big as my living room...and we have a decent sized living room for NYC standards!  I said we "sorta" fulfilled my dream of cutting down a tree because we did not actually end up cutting one down.  Sorry to mislead.  Our friends that we went with all got trees, but they are staying in the city for Christmas and we are not.  Not worth $60 if we are leaving in 2 weeks for AZ!  But we thoroughly enjoyed helping our friends get their trees.  Thanks for letting us come along for the ride!

I was not prepared for the freezing weather!  Poor Scott was cold!  Hugo (on the right) was totally prepared in his snow suit.

That's better.  He just needed a dad to keep him warm!

The farm also had the cutest indoor and outdoor markets!

The whole gang.  It was a successful day trip!

I'll have to post a pic of the real tree we got once I get the lights on it!

Black Friday stroll

I have a confession.  I already got my Christmas present!  Hooray for a new camera!  So on Black Friday we decided to take a stroll in the park so I could experiment with it.  Then we did some shopping and bought Bryan his Christmas present.  No surprises for us this year.  LOVE my new Canon Rebel t4i.  I have a lot of learning to do.  It's so fun taking pictures...especially when you have some super cute models!

 Some guy walked by and asked if we wanted a picture of all of us.  I said SURE and he then changed all my settings and acted like he knew what he was doing... and we turned out blue.

Thanksgiving 2012

We decided to do the Macy's Day Parade this year...and do it RIGHT.  Bryan went down with the other husbands at 5am to scope out spots and save seats.  At 6:30, the wives and babies joined the already crazy crowd.  2.5 hours later the parade started!  Time goes by so quickly when you are with a good group of friends :)  We had a blast looking at all the floats, dancers, clowns, celebrities, marching bands and balloons!  By the end of the parade, Scott was more than ready for a nap.

Bryan was going to leave us to go play football, but decided it was going to be too much of a pain and chose to stay for the parade with us!  Hooray!  That's why he looks like a bum in his cool football attire.  The joke was that Bryan was probably the only person out of millions to be in shorts!  Good thing he had his gloves and tall socks.

I secretly love the Food Network.  Probably the only tv channel I ever watch.  So I was a little excited to see Geoffrey Zakarian on the float!

Wooaaaah Spiderman balloon!

Scott and Hugo.  Best friends enjoying the parade together.  We are sure lucky to have this sweet little boy as our friend.

Front row seats.  Thanks babe!

The Fab Five

Later that day we joined a group of friends for our feast!  Food was so yummy and decor was fabulous!  Thanks Marilee for having us over!  We love our NYC family.

Name tags.

Some post dinner ping pong.  Bryan ended the night by going to the Jets football game with a friend, and Scott and I did some major snuggling.  

Scott was sooo excited to get the day going.  His new thing...smoosh his face against the mesh and growl at me till I come get him.

 Turkey bum.

So thankful for this little turkey of mine.  He has completely changed my life and I love him more than anything.

Searching for warmer weather (aka Arizona trip)

 We had planned on being in AZ for about 10 days, but ended up staying an extra week thanks to Hurricane Sandy.  We were supposed to fly back to NYC the night before the storm hit but decided to stay where it is sunny and warm a little longer.  I was so bad at taking pics, but here are a handful.

Scott started crawling in AZ!  I blame my mom's dog (pictured below) because Scott just wanted to chase him everywhere!

Some disc golf and feeding the ducks with Gpa Hall at Fountain Hills park.

Phoenix Zoo with cousins!

A must...Costa Vida lunch date with these cuties.

Love this little lady who is expecting baby #3!  So excited!!

We had to hit up a Toro football game...mainly to watch 2 of Bryan's sisters cheer.  Watching with Grammy Hall.

Perkinson cousin photo shoot!  Bradford is Scott's little buddy and little Elizabeth is like 3 days old in this pic!  We were so happy to be there when she joined this earth.

Just some playing.

 Sisters!

We were supposed to be back in NYC for Halloween, but since we got stranded for another week we enjoyed some of the festivities with our families.  I threw together a Chimney Sweep costume for Scott.  He loved to play with (destroy) his broom.  HOW CUTE is this little mermaid??  One of the best costumes of the night.  We love our friends, Kristin and Baby Capri.