Friday, December 31, 2010

year in review.

As we count down the last few hours of 2010, I thought I would share a little photo recap of our year. 

We kicked of 2010 with a party in Kennesaw.

In January we adopted our first little one and have been completely in love with him ever since.


February was a slow month but we enjoyed spending Valentine's together with Tucker and a nice little snowfall.

In March we spent a lot of time in Texas. I threw Kyle his first surprise party for his 24th birthday...
 

and we celebrated the wedding of two great friends, Kevin and Rachael.


In April we hosted my family in Atlanta for Easter....

took a trip to DC to celebrate Jenn's birthday...

and attend one of her bridal fittings.

We also spent a weekend in Miami for Jenn's bachelorette party...

and squeezed in a visit to my dad's new office at Rice University.

May marked the beginning of a crazy busy summer. I started off by heading to Texas to see one of my college roommates get married...

and attended a baby shower in honor of my cousin Allison and her first baby, Anderson Nicole.

Kyle and I celebrated one year of marriage with a fancy dinner, a stay at a nice hotel...


and an amazing cruise out of Galveston!

I even managed to be with my momma and celebrate her on Mother's Day.

In June, Kyle and I attended a Georgia Tech baseball game...

Tucker had his first stay at Camp Bow Wow...

...so we could fly home to celebrate Lauren and Charley's wedding!

Lots of dear friends and family gathered together to celebrate my favorite bride...


we spent Father's Day with our fantastic dad...

and Kyle and I travelled to California to see Kyle's childhood friend get married at a gorgeous vineyard.



The Simars, Kruegers and almost-Schwartzes headed to the lake house for the 4th of July...


where Tucker discovered that playing fetch is WAY more fun in the water!


In August we celebrated Jennifer and Jason in a big way with one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever seen...






In September I turned 24 years old...

my parents came to visit in honor of my birthday...

we said goodbye to the car I had driven since my senior year of high school...

and bought a gorgeous new 'big-kid' car.


We celebrated Tucker's first birthday in October...

two of my very best friends came to visit us in Atlanta...

and we took our first family camping trip.


Kyle and I celebrated our ninth anniversary this November...

spent Thanksgiving in Texas...


took our first trip to El Paso and celebrated Jenn and Jason's marriage...




got in some quality time with this pretty girl...

and had a rough few weeks while dealing with our sweet guy's eye problems and surgery.



This December we celebrated our first Christmas with a puppy...
(this is our Christmas pic but was taken before December as you can tell by the fact that Tuck hadn't had surgery yet)

 had a wonderful visit with my sweet grandma...

and enjoyed Christmas in Texas with our wonderful families. 

Until I started putting this post together, I had completely forgotten how very busy our 2010 was! It was such a fun year filled with celebrating and creating wonderful memories with our families. I love looking back at the pictures of all of the weddings and birthdays, we have so very much to be thankful for!

There were certainly struggles and challenges this year, as always, but I know that they have strengthened us as individuals and as a family. 

I pray that 2011 is a year rich with blessings for my family and for each of you. I also pray that we will weather any storms that this next year may bring our way, and come out of them with renewed strength, faith and thankfulness for the many blessings in our lives.

Thank you all for reading along and for all of the support and prayers that you have sent our way this year. I can't wait to see what this next year brings! 

Happy New Year, dear friends!


Thursday, December 30, 2010

christmas part two: christmas eve.

Christmas Eve was a very busy day for our family! We spent the morning and afternoon celebrating with my mom's side of the family. Not all of my aunts, uncles and cousins joined us but we had a great time with the family that was there!

There was no denying that the guest of honor that day was little miss Anderson (my cousin's baby girl). She was celebrating her very first Christmas and we could not get enough of her!

Jenn and I take our role of super old older cousins very seriously. We plan to teach Anderson ALL the important things in life, starting with how to make puppy chow...


I promised her that next year I'll let her have a little taste of that chocolatey goodness. What are we good for if not sneaking her sweets??


After our baking fun, it was time to play pass the baby!


Every single picture I took had Anderson in it. Apparently I am just a wee bit obsessed with this little gal. And I am not the least bit ashamed of that!


The Krueger fam has a tradition of a big lasagna dinner on Christmas Eve. I didn't take any pictures at dinner but it was DELICIOUS! My whole family joined us over there for dinner so we had a great Krueger-Simar celebration. We are very lucky to live so close and all be able to celebrate together. 

Another Krueger tradition is opening presents on Christmas Eve. We never got to do that when I was growing up so I embrace that tradition fully :) All of the Christmas Eve presents are from family so there are still Santa presents to open on Christmas morning. It's great fun. 

Tucker has discovered which of Kyle's brothers will spoil him and let him break the rules. After we opened presents, Tucker climbed right into Ryan's lap and snuggled in for a nice nap. Ryan didn't seem to mind... he seems pretty fond of his little nephew-pup.

After presents at the Krueger's, we joined my family for midnight mass. My dad read one of the Christmas Eve readings at mass. I am so glad we were there to hear that! No one was too thrilled that I wanted to stay after mass to get a Christmas picture, but I love it and am so glad we did it!


We slept at Kyle's house this year on Christmas Eve. Tucker and I did a little bit of snuggling before we went to bed to wait for Santa. This wasn't Tucker's first Christmas, but it was his first one with us and it was so fun! 

One more Christmas post to come!