Reese turns 4 months old

Wrapping up our best year yet

This year's Christmas letter...

2011 has been our best year yet – due largely to the arrival in August of our daughter, Reese Elizabeth.

Reese has been a miracle in our lives even before her birth. Early on our doctor stopped hearing the baby’s heartbeat and confirmed that we had lost the baby. Amazingly, the heartbeat reappeared 2 weeks later and she’s been healthy ever since! We are still shocked and incredibly grateful for this gift from God. Thankfully Reese has been healthy, happy, and overall a super-easy baby, so it hasn’t been too much of a shock to ease into parenthood.

The rest of the year mostly revolved around Reese... We quickly found that quite a lot of time can go into baby research, baby classes, baby nursery decorating, baby showers… you catch our drift.

We took an incredible trip to Turks and Caicos to celebrate the wedding of Kristie DeKoker and Corey Gibbs (whom we also were able to visit with when we met up at the Super Bowl this year!). Grace Bay was the nicest beach we’ve ever seen!

When we returned, Christine had a girls weekend with her Kappa friends in Scottsdale where they spent the entire weekend floating in a lazy river at the Westin Kierland.

Later this summer we took a “baby moon” down to Texas Hill Country to lounge by the pool, visit Sea World in San Antonio (Christine had to get her dolphin fix), and then explore the quaint town of Fredricksburg.

For work (to support all of the travel and baby purchases) Dana rotated off the Doritos team (not before the Doritos ad scored #1 out of all Super Bowl ads) but he was happy to be promoted to run brand marketing for PepsiCo’ in non-retail channels (foodservice, etc). Christine took on a new role leading Mass Media for the Marketing department, which surprisingly included filming a number of fun cooking shows (some even in Times Square).

Dana joined Christine on the Board of Partners International, an international missions ministry that we feel very strongly about (check out: www.partnersinternational.org)

We spent Thanksgiving in St. Louis with 19 extended family members and we are excited to host both sides of the family in our home to celebrate Christmas and ring in the New Year.

Wishing you and yours peace and joy this Christmas season! Christine, Dana & Reese

In this home...

I'm not sure where this came from, but I want it! How wonderful is this...

Source: Uploaded by user via Rhonda on Pinterest

Life... a lot less organized but still filled with joy

Life has been a whirlwind lately of busyness at work, attending holiday parties and realizing I'm REALLY behind on Christmas this year.

We're hosting both of our families for Christmas, and I think that my infamous, detailed "project plan" that helps us all function well together in one house during this time is just not going to happen this year. Where does the time go? I guess I'm just focusing my brain on other things this year.

Two thoughts that capture how I'm feeling:
1. My in-laws are a HUGE blessing. They are staying with us for awhile and watching Reese and it's given me incredible peace of mind as I've returned to work. They also feed us well : ) I will miss them greatly when they return to California in January.

2. Work is... not so bad. I was sort of dreading the end of maternity leave and while I wish I saw more of my sweet daughter, I really do think I have a pretty cool job. Even on it's crazy days, it can be a lot of fun. And the people I work with are pretty awesome.

I love being a mom

Source: etsy.com via Heather on Pinterest

How Christmas is meant to be

I encourage everyone to read this beautiful blog post about (in my opinion) the way to do Christmas right.

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2011/12/when-christmas-gets-radical-whose-birthday-is-it-really/

Such a magical time of year

We're so enjoying Reese's first Christmas season. It's full of so many special moments... I just want to soak them all in and savor them all!

Our attempt at getting a good Christmas card photo : )

Well, sometimes life isn't picture perfect... but it sure is fun!