Merry Christmas

What a week it has been! I thought the 1st 2 Christmas's with Kate were the best but this year won me over. The excitement in her eyes and voice on Christmas Eve were priceless. As you can see from the pictures, she was very excited to help me bake cookies for Santa and throw the carrots on the back patio for the reindeer. As I think back though, I am not sure if she was more excited about baking the cookies or eating the peanut butter filled Hershey Kisses. There is a video in the attached pictures from Christmas morning. She was a little overwhelmed with all the goodies but quickly came out of her shell and enjoyed all of her new presents. The biggest hits appear to be the new baby dolls; the American Girl Bity Baby from Santa and an antique Madame Alexander Baby Victoria from my mom, which is a collection of dolls that I have passed down to Kate. The last two days have been filled with putting the babies to sleep along with trying to play with all of the other new stuff! Oh the excitement...

We had several wonderful celebrations, including the one in Somerset with Ryan's family, the celebration Christmas Eve with my Dad, Aunt Granny and Uncle Pal, Christmas morning with my Mom and Bob, and lastly, Christmas evening with Thirza and the rest of the Ellis family. No one will ever understand how much it meant to all of us that everyone made the trip to Louisville this year versus us doing so much of the travel! Enjoy the pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/Christmas2008##

Professional pictures

Now that our Christmas cards are out, I wanted to pass along the link to some professional pictures that we got as a family. Please feel free to visit the following website and go to the SITE page. Once at the site, go to the PROOFS page and put in the following password:

website: http://www.laurachismphotography.com/
password: RWKM

I hope you enjoy! We had a blast with Laura and hope to use her again. I think the pictures came out great! It was the 1st time since Kate was 3 months old that we got family pictures done.

I will post some pictures from last weekends visit to Somerset in a couple of days. We had our 1st Christmas celebration of the 2008 holiday season last Saturday with Ryan's family. Kate and Ava had a blast as usual and everyone was way too generous with the gift giving. Kate has been busy playing with all of her new toys and art supplies since we got home. Tonight we tried to visit my mom and Bob; however, there was a wreck on the 2-lane highway on the way to their house that blocked the road. We waited for almost 30 minutes; however, the wreck was not going anywhere so we turned around and headed back to Louisville. I am sorry we missed all the fun with Kara and Mark's families.

Since tonight didn't turn out as planned, Ryan and I decided to exchange one gift to one another! I got the new Blackberry Storm phone...YEA!!!!! I am not really into electronics but this phone is so much fun. I am going to activate it tomorrow so I can play with it as soon as possible. Kate and I gave Ryan a new Suunto watch.

More to come this week. I hope to capture some video and MANY pictures of our upcoming celebrations. Kate is so excited about Santa coming through her chimney she can hardly stand it!!

Official Santa Picture

Here is the official Santa picture!!!

Happy Holidays

It has been several weeks since I have had the chance to get on the blog and that is usually the result of being too busy at work. Luckily, starting Tuesday, I am off for 10 days straight and I plan to spend all of that time playing, sleeping and cleaning! 2008 has been a great year professionally for both of us...it has also just been really busy. Now that I am somewhat adapted to my new role, I am hoping that in 2009 I will have a little more balanced :) This week was also a little rough due to Kate having strept throat. She woke up Wednesday night with a fever and saying her tongue hurt. I looked in her mouth and her tonsils were so swollen they blocked her entire throat. It was pitiful. She and I were home Thursday and Friday. Luckily, the doctor said she would only be down for 24 hours and she was right! She is back in action and feeling great!


As you can see below, we visited Santa several days ago and she was a champ. She sat in his lap for almost 3 or 4 minutes, telling him everything she wanted...a piano, babydoll and sunglasses. Lets hope that doesn't change before Thursday!

We are off to Somerset this morning for our 1st of many Christmas celebrations. We will be spending the day with Ryan's family: Chad, Melissa, Ava, Jo, Sandy, and Opal Ann.

http://picasaweb.google.com/whitneymardis/GettingReadyForChristmas2008#