The Grand Tour

Since mostly everyone already knows what we've been up to lately I decided to try something a little different this year.  What follows are the full-size (non-cropped) images of our thoughtfully selected Christmas card photos.  I thought the story of them might tell the story of us a bit more thoroughly than would your standard Christmas letter. Enjoy!

Logan is coming up on halfway through his first year of Kindergarten (4K) and is a few weeks in to his amateur hockey career as a member of the Ice Wolves hockey team. I believe myself to be taking the transition in stride with the notable exception of the donning of hockey equipment. Each week, Logan sits cooperatively and the girls look on patiently as Mom wrestles with skates, pads, socks, and other bewildering hockey items, some of the names of which she doesn't know and others she just can't recall. Dad, of course, is elated to have an athlete in the family (and probably also to be at work on Saturday mornings while the skates are being laced and the helmet hammered into position.) Mostly the young rookies are still just learning how to maneuver on the ice, but Logan has improved tremendously in the past couple of weeks alone and we are very proud of his spirit and perseverance. 

As some of you may have guessed, I cheated a little with this one. It's actually from Danielle's wedding a couple of years ago. With so many small children biting our ankles, it's somewhat rare to find a picture of just the two of us together. I actually did manage to turn up one that was taken earlier this year, but I decided the background didn't fit in well enough with the other Christmas card photos, so I went with this one instead. My favorite thing about going back and digging up this picture after a couple of years is that I realized Baby Corinne is in it as well! This is August 13, 2010 and we were expecting, but didn't know it yet, so Zach's hand resting probably right on her is a complete coincidence <3

Our most recent family photo, taken September 2012.  We decided to do our photos early this year because my little daredevil Julianne had to have a tooth pulled in early October due to some trauma involving a fall from a chair. Ironically, she's not smiling a toothy smile in the photo and she looks equally adorable partially toothless anyway. If anyone keeps their old Christmas cards, you can probably go back through and see that we've worn red and black every year since the beginning of time. However, this year, for whatever reason (perhaps pregnancy hormones) I decided I was sick and tired of red, so we went with blues and browns (and a little purple) instead.

Corinne sporting her signature massive baby grin.  She just  loves to say cheese (often she even says it if you're holding something that looks remotely like, but is definitely not, a camera) and she holds out the 'ee' in cheese for as long as she possibly can which is why almost every picture of her looks exactly like this.

Our Preschool Ballerina Julianne. She chose the dance outfit all by herself and she just loves getting all prettied up for dance class. Her group will be performing Baby's First Christmas in the Highland Holiday Concert on the 20th. She is so excited and we can't wait to see all the little ones dancing with their baby dolls.  (Julianne's "baby" of choice is currently a stuffed seahorse, so I suppose we'll see that too.) So adorable. She has the best time with the other little girls and since she takes lessons up at the school, most of them are going to be in her pre-kindergarten class next year so she'll have some friends and a big brother around to get her off to a great start! 

We had some spring photos of the kids taken in May. They are so precious. I got a great deal on these right-after-Easter dresses. The girls were so excited about them. I always get Logan's picture taken in the same suit. Poor kid. He's growing so tall though that I think by next year I'm finally going to have to start shopping for a new one. 

This is a bonus photo :) I really wanted to get it on the card, but I just couldn't make it work. It's me with all four of my little ones. Logan has his left hand on the baby. The bears are just visiting.

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM OUR HOUSE TO YOURS!

WE LOVE YOU ALL!

God Bless,

Zach, Andrea, Logan, 

Julianne, Corinne, and (coming soon) Baby Mason