merry christmas everyone!

enjoy :)

merry nate & bri christmas!

so nate and i celebrated our christmas this morning :)  (much like the pennsylvania 'thanksmas,' we move the holiday to where it's convenient!)  we played scrabble on 'christmas eve' lastnight.  i thought our santa table decoration coordinated rather well with the scrabble bag.  doesn't it look like his bag of toys?

 

it was a tough board!  we were mostly confined to the lower corner due to some bad start out words (ahem... nate)  and my letters were atrocious!  at one point, i swear i had all i's.  and this rack, which totally made me want to spell hee-haw (but i doubt that's an acceptable scrabble word!)

then nate spelled 'pinna,' which i challenged, and lost.  apparently pinna is a long forgotten botany word.  i don't think he knew that though, i think he just got lucky!  :)

 

after christmas eve, we were excited for christmas morning to arrive!  we got up early(ish) and started with stockings!  (ours are new this year, i finally found some i really liked :)  cleo's has been around for a few years though)

 

then we had the dogs pose by the tree.  for those of you who don't know, benny is a dog we've been dogsitting for the past month and a half (his owner was injured and can't walk him at the moment).  he went home today, but not before he and cleo got their picture together.  you may remember that cleo doesn't like to sit too near other dogs. 

can you believe that pile of gifts in the back is all for us?  nate went a bit overboard this year :)  he even had a few adressed to himself.... from santa.  including this one, a book on tennis skills:

 

santa was all about tennis this year.  he also got nate and i a costco size supply of tennis balls, and a ball hopper!  i got all kinds of goodies including a new camera bag to hold all my gear, a really cool calendar of paris, cool photography books, a new outift, etc.  :)

after 'christmas morning' we had what nate affectionately calls 'mexican breakfast':  refried beans, fried potatoes, and tortillas.  it was super tasty if i do say so myself :)  

and the best part is?  christmas isn't even over yet!  lots more family time to come :)  hope your holidays are happy!

some new photos

finally posted ;) there are some new in october and november - and more to come!

included in the new are a bunch from our weekend in captiva with glen & family -- i took TONS of the sunset. and i posted less than half of what i took so... you're welcome! it's still a lot to wade through but we happened to catch a really pretty sunset. and i was drinking cocktails which tends to increase my 'number of photos taken' metric ;)

enjoy!

cleo says hi!

holiday blog neglect

haven't been posting much lately but holiday activities have been keeping me busy! :) we celebrated thanksgiving AND christmas in PA over the traditional thanksgiving holiday this year (as has become our tradition when we spend thanksgiving with nate's family). it's fun :) kicking off the christmas season by popping up the tree, drinking hot cocoa and exchanging gifts not only gets you in the spirit, but also crosses a bunch of things off of your list early!

since we've been back, we've been playing some tennis, getting together with friends, and finishing up christmas shopping. we bought our tree, 'santa the christmas tree #3,' and decorated the house. this year i FINALLY found stockings that i liked enough to buy, it would have been our third christmas without stockings (oh the horror!) but we're all set now :)

on the picture front, i'm stuck somewhere back in october but as soon as things calm down a bit, i'll get back on the wagon.

also, i really enjoyed the steeler's game last week (against the cowboys). usually i go with nate, but generally ignore the game by playing the bar video game, or reading a magazine, or whatever. this time it was an exciting game and i watched the entire thing. cassie thinks i'm crazy :) but there is really quite a bit of drama in the nfl (just like the commmercial. i'm such a marketer's dream).

happy holidays!

tennis, tennis, tennis!

we've been playing more tennis lately (and are now fully supplied with all the right gear thanks to some christmas presents from laura and drew!)

last week, nate and i played singles and as nate put it, i was 'dogging it.' i was feeling kind of lazy so i didn't exactly bring my A game. i did have a talk with nate about raising his arms NFL touchdown style every time he won a point though ;)

today we played doubles with some friends of ours and had a good time :) nate and i need to do some work on our doubles strategy though ;)

also this weekend, we saw twilight (nate HATED it, i liked it but then again, i read the entire book series and all the outtakes too), had sushi night (and i drank a bit too much wine), and decorated for christmas! more on that later ;)