Well we had a fabulous first Christmas married. Our Christmas was actually a week earlier than actual Christmas. We decided that we needed to start our own Christmas traditions, being that we came from families that both had some great Christmas traditions we wanted to make it our own. We woke up and Santa had been to visit our house, only there were 2 Santas......1 wrapped presents and 1 laid the presents out. I realized this will be long discussion the first Christmas we have kids. Kyle's family always had presents from Santa laid out so they could see their presents. My family would wrap the presents, but Santa used different paper than any of the other presents and usually wrote with his/her left hand. It was great to just have all day with each other. We took our time opening presents, eating cinnamon rolls and golden rod toast, a tradition from both families, although golden rod is a Easter tradition Kyle wanted it for Christmas. Our trip back to St. Louis started by leaving in the middle of the night to surprise my family on the Sunday before Christmas. My great grandma had passed away that day and we decided to pack up a few hours early so we could have the whole day with family before going to the funeral on Monday. Christy surprised us by coming home early too and so we were able to spend time with the entire Bartosiak family, which doesn't happen very often. We were able to play with Caden, Noah, and Josalyn who are all growing and change so much each time we see them. I definitely cherish the 2 days before Christmas it was wonderful to just play and have fun and not worry about where we needed to be and when we needed to be there. We headed over to Chesterfield to spend Christmas Eve with the Toti's, which was memorable to say the least. From kids say the darndest things at church with a surprise from Jasi, a crazy game of spoons with diving across tables and even losing a shoe, cleaning Aunt Karen's kitchen just for some Christmas Eve fun after a collision in the kitchen, and ended the night by going back to the Bartosiak's for Christmas morning chaos. Kyle was introduced to the Bartosiak's way of opening gifts which can be painful if you are one of those people that just tear open presents. My sister, dad, and mom like to enjoy the paper, so much so that they could re-use the paper the next year if they wanted. After 5 hours of opening and watching Caden, Noah, and Josalyn play with presents we headed over to Grandma Bartosiak's house for some Christmas lunch. We enjoyed seeing cousins from Texas and Grandma surprised me with a new red digital camera (my camera even looks cute). We were excited to get on the road to go to the Toti's for Christmas Night. We had fun introducing Bailey to her cousin Miley and again Champ and Daisey were not a huge fan of our Bails. Kyle's mom had decided that Kyle is the only one with enough energy to keep up with Bailey. I was excited when I opened a GPS and asked is this what's really in the box? I am excited to know that I will never get lost in Knoxville again! We spent the rest of the night playing games with the Toti family, which has become a fun thing we do when we come to visit, although spoons again can get very violent. Kyle's mom had a jammed finger and I had pierced Kyle's dads hand with my wedding ring....oooops. We loved making such great memories for our first Christmas together.
We had my sister and her family come and stay this weekend with us. We had so much fun just hanging out and playing with the kids. Josalyn and Noah are hilarious and we had a blast just playing all weekend. They came in late Friday night and the kids were ready to play and we opened birthday presents (we are horrible aunts and uncles, their birthdays were in October and Sept. but we are just now giving them presents in Jan.) We went up to the Pinnacle and introduced them to Webb's Country Kitchen Saturday. We took them to our church Sunday and visited Kyle's school. Noah showed us how he could inhale some Chinese food at the Chinese Buffet and we had a dinner picnic while the boys watched football playoffs. We stayed up late and enjoyed hanging out with Christy and Josh and playing singing catch phrase, which lead to lookin up the songs on you tube. Bailey loved all the attention the kids gave her and they had fun playing fetch and tug of war. We loved just spending time together and it not being so crazy, thanks guys for making the trip down here we had a blast. Here are some of the pictures of our weekend and to enlarge them just click on the collage. To look at our web album just click the slideshow to the right.
I decided to try to make my first wreath, ok not my first but my first without the help of my crafty mom. I think it turned out pretty well and considering I was outside spray painting in the single digits weather. The cold doesn't bother me, and I think it turned out pretty cute.
I came up with a good idea to help with our hallway when you first come in because it smells like smoke from our neighbors house, it's pretty bad when you can smell cigarette smoke coming through the walls. I found some cinnamon sticks clearanced out at Walmart and a little ribbon and glitter I came up with this.
I was so excited to use my apothecary jar Colleen and I got from Williams Sonoma. We got a steal on these and Kyle said what are you going to use that for and I just said just wait and see I'll find something to put in there for every season and sure enough I just took my snowflakes ornaments off the tree and plopped them in here. I also love the snowman I got from one of my students last year and I wasn't ready to put him back in the shed until next Christmas. 
= GREAT NIGHT! Well except for the fact that we got there right as the movie was starting and had two choices sit in the very front row and have cramped necks or sit separate rows right in front and behind each other. So we didn't sit next to each other on our romantic date night, haha. But we still had a good time.
