Loooooong Post

Okay, I have had enough people say that I haven't posted anything in months, so I have decided to sit down and actually update everyone on the last 3 months in the Pond home. Since my last post we have had Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and two birthdays. It was a crazy time and we have not quite settled down from all of the excitement. During that time we either forgot to take pictures or remembered our camera and left it at someone's house, so as for pictures I will post what I have which are mostly Christmas. Richie's parents came down to visit for an entire month over the Christmas season. The original plan was to stay three weeks, but they found a remodel job while they were down so they had to extend their time an extra week in order to finish the project. It was a fun time having them down. We had a full house and were bursting at the seams. Now the house seems so empty and makes me long for more company so that I can have everything full again. So, enough with the wishing and lets get to the pictures.We might as well start with the cute one. This wa Allie's Christmas dress. I put it on and she twirled and twirled and then had to go downstairs so Grandpa could take a picture. She's been into getting her picture taken lately. Now whenever she puts something on or is doing something cute she says, "Mommy you need to take a picture of this." She cracks me up.

Every year we go up to my grandparent's house in Prescott for their Christmas party. We have Mexican Food, do the nativity, and then Santa brings stockings for everyone. We don't know how much longer we will be doing that so this year my family decided to start our own and my parent's home. We all got together, had dinners, did a short nativity (with only 3 grandkids), and then all of the grandkids got stockings. My siblings and I also got together and gave our parents dinner and tickets to go see the Smothers Brothers. If you have no idea who I am talking about we seriously need to talk about what you think is comedy. It was a fun night and I look forward to doing it every year.

Now on to Christmas. As you can tell from the pictures below, we may have gone a little overboard with gifts this year. It was kind of hard to stop when we were playing Santa for more than just a two year old. Allie is the absolute best person to by presents for because she loves anything she gets, but being able to provide Christmas to other members of our family was great. After the one we had last year, this year made up for it.



There are many more images to share but I'm tired of uploading. As you can tell, we had tons of fun and a full house!

Next was my birthday. It was fun I got to eat Macayo's and spent time with family. I also got to work from home so I didn't have to go to the office that day. My sister-in-law and her family drove down that day to spend the week with all of us so it was fun to have them here a s well.


Last but not least, New Year's Eve. We spent it over at Robbie and Callie's playing games and eating until we were about to burst. It was a fun time of family and friends.

Needless to say, we had a great holiday season and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. There is nothing better than family!