November-December 2007

Diefenbach Family Ornament Party

At the end of November we hosted the annual Diefenbach Family Ornament Exchange Party at our house. This event is mostly for the family members on the west side of the mountains (although all are invited!). We had a pretty good turn out and had lots of fun. We also found out that Bridget's cousin Amber and her husband Ben are expecting their first baby in August. This news was funny for us because last year (2006) we found out we were pregnant the day of the ornament party. We had decided to wait to make the announcement until Bridget was further along but did tell Bridget's parents that night. We have decided that it is now tradition that someone announce their pregnancy at every ornament exchange party, so who's next...Jessica...Heather...Angie??? Ha ha!

Hosting the party also motivated us to get a little more settled into our house...although we still didn't have much furniture...oh well! We also had to decorate for the holidays so we got our first August Family Christmas Tree, very exciting (at least for Bridget and Claire!).



PEPS Festivus

Our parenting group decided to celebrate the holidays with our babies, so we had a festivus party at Jay and Fairleigh's house. We always have so much fun with these families, our PEPS group has become quite close and still meet on an every-other-week basis. The babies have fun rolling around on the floor and we have fun visiting and sharing life's "highs and lows"!!



Christmas

Claire's first Christmas was quite an event. It was great to hear from so many of our friends and family members at the holidays, thank you for keeping us in your thoughts, you are always in ours.

As we said before, we had our very first Christmas Tree and it was just beautiful. Michael still has almost all of his childhood ornaments which we used to trim the tree, making it very special. Christmas Eve we went down to Bridget's parents and had our traditional Christmas Eve meal...homemade pizza! We all stayed the night, woke up the next morning and opened presents. Claire played santa, thanks to the adorable hat and booties from Aunt Marion and Uncle Jerry! Claire loved opening presents, especially the wrapping paper which she enjoyed more than the gifts inside! Go figure! Even the "boys", mini weiners Argos and Mogi, were included in Christmas and are shown here in their new matching athletic rain jackets from Grandma Carol!