Merry Christmas!!!

As always with lots of wonderful family to see our holiday season is spent just like everyone elses darting from house to house spending time with family, opening gifts, snapping pictures and filling our bellies. Our Christmas Eve was spent with the Morrow Family this year as we alternate each year.

Ava enjoyed spending time in Aunt Libby's basement playing toys with her cousin Andy.

She even stayed still for a quick picture with Uncle Adam and Kalista

And of course her favorite part...opening gifts with Aunt Katie and Granny. Look at the giant triceratops that Uncle Adam and Kalista gave her. She LOVES dinosaurs and named her three horn Sarah.

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and enjoyed spending time with all of our family!

Christmas Day
After our annual Christmas Eve service at church and hot chocolate at Gigi's house we headed home for a quick night's sleep. Ava didn't seem to mind the lack of sleep...she was all smiles waking up bright an early!

Look...Rudolph ate his apple and of course Santa ate his cookies!

Where does she begin????

Wait...what could be hiding underneath that table cloth?

Oh my...it's an enormous pink dollhouse! (More on the story of this dollhouse later)

ooohhh...look at all the dollhouse accessories!

Nothing's better on Christmas Day than a snuggle from Uncle Chris!

Hopefully sitting on all the wrapping paper will make more room!

Oh no...doesn't Mommy look pretty in this picture :0

After a yummy breakfast, we all got ready and headed over to Gigi and G-Paws house! We opened more presents and had yet another delicious meal!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas...we sure did!

Cookie Time!

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is baking my great grandmother's sugar cookies and other special treats. Last week, while Papa Guy was in Scotland Mimi came down and us girls got to baking! We put on our matching aprons, mixed and chilled the dough and starting pressing our old fashioned sugar cookies with Christmas sugar (or if you were Ava...pink & purple sugar). We had tons of fun and once again it was a very special day for all of us...especially when we got to sit down with the yummy warm cookies and a cold glass of milk!

Peeling the wrappers off the Hershey kisses

Of course...you have to taste test and make sure their perfect!

Pressing the pink & purple sugar on the cookies.

Callaway Gardens & Happy 30th Birthday to Me!

Friday night the three of us and Mimi and Papa loaded up and headed for a fun little getaway & birthday celebration to Callaway Gardens. Right now, nothing better sounded to me then spending a low key fun day with some of my favorite people.

Ava always enjoys the beautiful lights and actually stayed awake the whole trolley ride this year (if it had been 5 more minutes though we would have lost her). It was FREEZING, and while we enjoyed snuggling under blankets, we were happy to head inside for a visit to Santa. Ava couldn't wait to see him and had no problem telling him she wanted a Rudolph the red nosed reindeer and a "hard" dollhouse (as opposed to her "soft fabric" Pottery Barn one).

After talking to Santa we headed back to our Cottage for some delicious birthday cake and presents.

The next morning we woke up and went to breakfast. Ava got another special treat as Rudolph decided to pay our table a visit. When he walked in she stood up in her chair yelling Rudolph come see me!

It was a wonderful birthday and I appreciate everyone who called, sent cards or emailed me!

Please save the date...

We have exciting news to share...that we've been keeping a secret since the end of September!

Please save the date of June 5th, 2009 for the arrival of a new baby Morrow! That's right Ava is going to be a big sister come late spring.

We have been hoping to tell everyone in person, but with the holidays and everyone's busy schedules we can't wait any longer.

We are so excited and thrilled beyond words that God has blessed us with another opportunity to be parents again. We are right at 16 weeks, and everything is going wonderful so far. Currently, I'm only on my normal medications and hopefully my Lupus will continue to stay in a good spot throughout the duration of this journey. I do have to say that it is a completely different pregnancy so far than the one we had with Ava, and we are once again enjoying every minute of it!

So without any further ado, we'd like to introduce a few pictures of the little girl/guy (we already know what we are having...but will keep a few of you guessing a little longer). We were able to find out early at the Perinatologist/Dr. Korotkin's office on Monday, December 8th which was a real treat as Ava got to see the baby for the first time.

This was at 9 weeks...still looks like a "bean"

These are pictures from Monday's appointment (14 weeks/5 days)

Profile pictures

This picture is of one of the baby's feet/ and one of it's legs bent...apparantly it's just relaxing! You can see the little bones in the toes too!

We are delighted to finally be able to share this exciting news with all of our friends and family, and it's wonderful to finally be in the second trimester!

Here's me...at 16 weeks.

We can't wait to share more pictures...and the gender with you soon!!

Love to you all!

Jennifer, Nick & Ava

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Decorating the house for the holidays, is always something that we enjoy (more so when everything is set up). Now that Ava is 3...as you can imagine she is all about trimming the tree, hanging the stockings, and helping mommy in setting up her Christmas in the City. She didn't hesitate in telling us where we should place all the ornaments on the tree, I guess she had her own "vision". We still have some more decorating to do, and as soon as it stops raining she can't wait to help daddy put up our little front porch tree.

Ava posing with all of the Christmas in the City boxes.

Ava with part of the finished product.

The Pink Pig

Every year, we make it a point to pay a visit to the Pink Pig with Mimi. This is something that Ava looks forward to throughout the year. Whenever we go to Lenox and park at the top of the parking deck, Ava asks us when the Pink Pig will be "coming home". She has always loved riding the Pink Pig, but this year she squealed with delight and had so much fun. She was finally tall enough to be in a car of her own and couldn't contain her excitement!

Another month has gone by!

Where does the time go? It's already the middle of December, so I guess we better catch everyone up on the whirlwind that was the month of November.

The month of November seems to be a blur to us as we are now focused on Christmas and other new and exciting things, but we had a busy fun month and are thankful for so much this year!

While Mommy was busy on the computer getting ready for a Dizzy Dragonfly show...Ava immersed herself in her artwork as usual...this time she really immersed herself as she decided it would be "tons of fun mommy" to place her face (instead of her hands) in the stamp pad and make a face print on paper...she was so proud as you can tell from the picture below.

Her school also had a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast! Mommy got to join her and was delighted to see that Miss Heather had them all dressed up as pilgrims! Don't Ava and her friend Anna look so sweet and innocent...ha ha!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, mostly spent on the road making the rounds...but we wouldn't have it any other way. It's hard to believe that 2008 will be coming to close. This year has been a year filled with so many ups and downs...however, we are truly thankful for them all as it makes us who we are today! Well I'm off to get started updating everyone on the month of December so stay tuned...we're sure you'll enjoy some of the things that are happening around The Morrow Manor!