Easter

Forgive the late posts, but I'm trying to get caught up on blogging.  It just got away from me over the summer.  So, I'll be posting a bunch of catch up stuff over the next couple weeks.

We had a great Easter filled with lots of fun family activities.  It was fun to watch Naomi be more of an active participant in the whole "egg thing".  :)  Just a warning - picture overload on this post.

Saturday morning, we went to an egg hunt at a nearby church (not ours).  She was a little overwhelmed, but enjoyed picking up and shaking the eggs and then throwing them back down.  :)

Saturday afternoon, my MIL, Emily, came over to play with Naomi (and make sure Brian had back-up as he was on-call for work and I was at a baby shower - thanks!).

Sunday morning before church, she got her Easter basket from us.

Sunday morning at church, we met up with my Mom and Stepdad and she got her Easter basket from them - she left a wake of Easter grass behind her - cracked us up.

Sunday evening, my Dad and Stepmom came over and we did a little egg hunt.  She gathered all her eggs and stuck them in "Busy Town" on her activity cube.  Too funny.

That's it!  Only took us 6 months to post.  :)  Ooops.

Christmas Clips...

Here are some random pics from Christmas that I never posted...

Reading my Baby Elf book

Christmas Eve Morning

Fun with tissue paper

Me and Grandma T

Me and Uncle Alex

My new red chair

Pulling the hat off my head

Me and Grandpa Ken

Merry Christmas!

I ran out of cards before I ran out of people to send them to this year.  I saw this coming so I prioritized family first, then friends who sent us one, and then I was out of cards (actually a couple people in group two even got left out and I'm quite positive that I missed a couple in group one as well).  The end result is that I didn't get to send a card to a LOT of our dear friends.  Now I know with even more certainty that I am blessed and that I need to plan ahead better next year. 

All of this to explain why this is my Merry Christmas to you (if you are among all the wonderful people to whom I didn't end up sending a card).  On the upside, it's one less card you have to feel slightly guilty about throwing away at the end of the season.  So here is the digital version...

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

the picture from our card

Our annual Christmas letter with highlights of the year:

We welcomed Naomi Katherine Culp into our loving arms on January 10^th of this year.  She is such a blessing.  It’s been amazing to watch her grow and develop over the past year.  She is a sweet, social, happy, smart, clever, and beautiful baby girl who babbles and cruises around the house.  I can’t believe we’ll be celebrating her first birthday so soon!     

Although we had two trips planned, we decided to forgo them to stay with our baby and to save some money.  So, our travels this year have included trips to Houston for a wedding and to Austin to visit Brian’s mom, Emily.  We learned a lot about traveling with an infant.  There were a lot of moments that weren’t funny at the time, but are now.  J 

Brian actually changed jobs in October of this year.  He is now a Service Delivery Manager with Vertex.  It was a really good career opportunity that he couldn’t pass up.  He’s been getting to know his new role and is really enjoying it. 

Brian continues to pursue his bachelor’s degree part-time at the University of Texas at Dallas (still making excellent grades).  We can see a light at the end of the tunnel – on course for graduation in spring of 2013. 

I was laid off from Microtune back in February while on maternity leave (yes, it’s legal as they laid off most of my department in a company acquisition).  I went on one interview and came home crying and hoping that I didn’t get the job because I just didn’t want to leave Naomi.  We talked… we crunched numbers… and, my new job of being a stay at home mom is what I will happily be doing until we decide otherwise.  I never thought I’d be a stay at home mom or love it this much.  I even got a sewing machine for my birthday (still figuring out what to do with it); just call me Suzy Homemaker.  Life can be pleasantly surprising. 

I returned to teaching Jazzercise when my medical leave ended.  It’s been challenging to get back in the groove, but good for me. 

In October, we completed the Dallas 13.1 (a half-marathon) with Team World Vision to raise money for a clean water project in Africa.  It was the hardest half we’ve done (it’s our 3^rd one, but the 1^st one post-baby) and we had our slowest time, but we are so proud to prevail and to have run for such a worthy cause. 

We truly can’t believe all the changes that have happened this year and how much we have been blessed through it all.  Looking forward to seeing what God has in store next year.  Wishing you and your family a very joyous Christmas and a great start to the New Year! 

Love,
Brian, Christine, and Naomi Culp 

Naomi and the Christmas Tree

Naomi loves the Christmas tree... a little too much.  


We are constantly having to pull her out from under it - 
"No pulling the tree"
"No unwrapping gifts that aren't yours"
"No eating lightbulbs"... 
"Pulling is bad"
"Lightbulbs are ouchy", etc.  


It is definitely a full-time job.  


She finds the handful of things in the house that we wish she wouldn't play with and she goes after those things.  I'll have more pictures to prove it soon.  (As a responsible Mommy, I try to photograph the bad behavior before stopping it.)  :)  


These are pictures of her first supervised trip to the tree a couple weeks ago.  

Naomi's First Trip to See Santa

We had talked about going to see Santa at Northpark, but we happened to be going up to Allen today, so decided to just try to see Santa at the Village at Fairview.  There was a virtual waiting line that we called into, so we were able to eat lunch while waiting.


Once we got to the front of the virtual line, we checked in with the front desk and got in the short Santa line (generally about 5 families at a time in line).  It really was a pretty good system.  The only hitch for us was that the camera malfunctioned while we were in line, so the photographer had to get it going again which resulted in some delay.


At this point, we are right during Naomi's naptime and I'm a little worried, but she seemed pretty entertained by all the surrounding people and stuff.  Once it was our turn we got Naomi ready, handed her to Santa and they snapped away.  They gave us very specific instructions as sometimes babies in her age group don't do well with Santa.  Naomi was her usual gregarious self and did great with Santa and took a bunch of great pics.


So without any more blabbing by me, here are the rest of the best ones.... Enjoy!

Fall Festival / Halloween

Here are some photos from Halloween and our church's Fall Festival.  The Wednesday before Halloween our church did a big Fall Festival with food, game booths, lots of bounce houses in all shapes and sizes, a petting zoo and a little train.  It was great.  By the time we finished working at our ABF's booth (we had the first shift and it ran a little longer than expected), Naomi was too tired to really be interested in anything.  So, hopefully next year will go better.  We will certainly plan better - take a later shift so that she can have fun first and pass out in the stroller second.  Either way, it was fun to see all the kids in costume having a good time.  

Here are some pics from Halloween night:

And here are some shots of Fall Festival:

Dallas Arboretum - Pumpkin Patch

Brian took a day off between his old job and his new job, so we took advantage of it to use the Groupon we bought to go the Dallas Arboretum.  It was her first trip to a Pumpkin Patch and a great photo op for us.  We also met up with a college friend of mine, Jenny, and her cute daughter, Lily.  It was a fun time.  


So, this post is pretty much just going to be photos.  I'm saving one of our whole family to use on our Christmas card, so I'm not posting the winning shot here yet.  :)  

Fourth of July!

For the Fourth of July this year, we took advantage of the long weekend (plus Brian taking an extra day off) to make a road trip to Austin to see Emily (Brian's mom, my MIL).  It was a really good trip.  We did a much better job of picking places to stop and feed and change baby which cut down on my stress level.  Plus, we were much more organized in our packing and preparation, although we still should have done more the night before and not left quite so many things for in the morning.  But since we didn't have to be to Austin at a specific time, it didn't really matter.  For the most part, we weren't on any particular schedule which was much better for baby since we were able to work around her napping and feeding needs.  This always makes for a much happier baby!  :) 


Highlights for me include: 

• The general feeling of a much more successful roadtrip with baby.  It seems small, but any baby mama can tell you that it's huge. 
• A few hours of baby free shopping with my MIL.  Looked at sewing machines (will likely have a post on that later), bought some pants and shirts for myself (see previous post), and bought some cute clothes on clearance at Carter's for Naomi to wear when she gets bigger. 
• Hearing Naomi rip out her biggest, longest laugh ever.  Emily still has no idea what she did to elicit it and we couldn't replicate it.  It was the most magical sound!
• Doing what Bethanny Frankel calls "bathies" with Naomi.  Since we didn't bring her infant tub with us down to Austin, I just hopped in the tub with her.  The first night, I didn't get the setup quite right and it was new for her, so she didn't like it.  But, by our third go around, she seemed to enjoy it and I could hold her like it was tummy time in the water while she batted at her bath toys.  It was so cute - wish we could've gotten a picture.  Can't wait to try swimming with her!
• And, last, but certainly not least, is splitting a Mexican Martini with Brian at Trudy's.  Mmmm, mmmm... last time we went there, I was pregnant, so no drinky drink for me, but this time I savored it (in moderation obviously).  We told Emily that once I'm not breastfeeding anymore, we'll have to go get our own and let her drive home. 

And of course this post would not be complete without pics, so here they are. 


Enjoy and hope you had a Happy Fourth of July celebrating our freedom and the fine people who ensure it! 

Just relaxing and having some fun on my playmat.

Little Baby, Big Chair!

Happy 4th of July!

Playing in my sassy new dress!

An American Sweetie chillin' with Mom. 

Yippee!  Holidays Rock!