Happy Birthday to....

Josh, Cheri, Callie and Barb! Tis the season - of Jones family birthdays! I guess I chose the right family to marry in to. Happy birthday to my wonderful family! Lots of celebrating this year!

Josh gave me the most amazing gift by surprising me by bringing 4 of my best friends in town! After 2 days of celebrating, we came home from a movie on Friday night to find Sarah Taylor, Courtney, Erin and Katherine sitting on our couch! I have never been more surprised - I cried and shook until I finally calmed down enough to go to sleep that night! I have been missing these girls so much recently, and I think Josh picked up on that. Thank you Josh for organizing this special treat and thank you girls for making the trip to be with me- it meant more than you know!

Saying bye bye to Sarah...

And Katherine...

And Conor.

And bye bye to Erin and Court!

pajama time with Sarah and Katherine!

Helping Dada open his gifts!

Callie and Allen were there to celebrate!

Kyle and Abby Hedges joined us for our night out!

Birthday festivities kicked off at Ed's Tavern with Amy and Eric, Amanda and Callie!

Birthday Cake No. 1 (of 3)

A New Tradition

A few weekends ago we decided to start a new tradition and have a family baking day to kick off the holiday festivities. Callie, Cheri and I baked cookies and Libby played with Chief and Scott. When Libby woke up from her nap, we let her go to town with sugar cookies, icing and sprinkles. She had a ball, but was quite worried the whole time about her messy hands! She loved playing with the sprinkles and quickly discovered how great the icing tasted! After cookie baking, we stopped a lot to get our tree - Libby was worn out from the fun day, so it wasn't too much fun for her, but she loves looking at it now with all the sparkling lights!

Worn out little girl picking out the tree.

This one is just my size!

Libby loves Frosty!

Her favorite decoration so far is the lights! She picks each one up carefully and stares. She says something that I think is "sparkle"!

Yummy cookies!

These were Libby's creations- I really admire her use of mixed media and heavy dose of sprinkles :)

Only an Aunt would do this- thanks Callie! We really wanted her to enjoy the whole experience, so eating icing was definitely allowed :)

Good thing we had extra sprinkles!

Pastry chef in the making...

And a big kiss for Chief - he didn't wash his cheek all week!

This is yummy...

Libby was so worried about the mess on her hands, she kept holding them up for us to clean.

First taste of sprinkles...

Trying out the rocking horse!

Pretty decorations arrived while Libby slept! She loved discovering everything new!