Fort San Cristobal

Jay and I spent one of our days in San Juan exploring what is called Old San Juan, the original part of the city built predominantly in the 1500's. It was a really neat area with all these great little brick-paved streets and alleys. Since it was settled and built primarily by the Spanish, it was reminiscent of streets in Spain. (Or so it seems from photos I've seen; I haven't made it to Spain yet.)

To protect the city, there were 2 forts built. We took the time to explore one of them, Fort San Cristobal. It was such a great historical area and we enjoyed learning about some of Puerto Rico's history. Basically, Puerto Rico is the first main island you would come to if you sailed west from Europe, so they considered it the "gate" to the rest of the Caribbean and the Americas. Therefore, it needed to be strongly protected. Thankfully it was only attacked four times, although they continued to keep active military there through the 1960's. It was called Fort Brooke from the 1930's through 1960's when America ran it. It is now part of their national park system. I took tons of photos because it was such a neat area, and I loved that it was right on the ocean. Here are just a few to give you an idea of the beauty.

Puerto Rico Sunshine

This week, Jay and I had the opportunity to go to San Juan, Puerto Rico for 4 days. For the past few years, Jay's district office through Charlotte has an "award" trip. If the agents meet a certain goal of new clients, they get to go on a trip in January. This is the 4th year we have gone on these trips, and I must admit that it is really nice to go somewhere warm and sunny in January. I struggle with the cold, cloudy days of winter. It's like I take a deep breath at Christmas and don't let it out until the spring days of March. So having a little sunshine in January is wonderful!!

The beautiful beach. I love the color of the ocean in the Caribbean.

Jay and I really enjoyed having time just the 2 of us to go out to dinner, have conversations, relax, and read books. Neither of us had been to Puerto Rico before, so it was fun to explore a new city together.
On Monday, I literally sat beside this pool the entire day and read a book (Pat Conroy's My Reading Life). That's pretty much my idea of fabulous.
And if I got tired of reading, I looked up and saw this. Ahhh......

The Big Snow

On Monday morning we woke up to 6+ inches of snow! That's a lot for SC! I can only remember getting this much snow a few other times in my life. It's always so pretty and fresh on the first morning. It makes the whole day have a special feel--like a holiday.

These are the kinds of days that I used to love as kids. Jay took the kids out to play in the snow. They were excited to use their beach buckets to eat the snow, play basketball and baseball in the snow, go down the slide, make snow angels, etc. Jay is much better at playing in the snow than me. I'll take pictures and watch, but don't hit me with a snowball!





Catherine is catching on to my favorite part of playing in the snow: coming inside to drink hot chocolate and sit by the fire!
It's now day 3 and the snow is still here. Thankfully the sun is shining and melting some away today. We've been in the house for a long time! Snow in SC closes down everything to an extended period of time. It's like Christmas vacation #2.

9 months old

Anna turned 9 months old right after Christmas. I know I say it every month, but she is such a joy to our family and we are so thankful for her. She is now crawling all over the house, even up the stairs. She is babbling lots and lots and occasionally making sounds like "mama" and "dada". Jay even thinks she said "Hey" the other day. She is getting better about eating real food. Her favorites are cheerios, graham crackers, baked sweet potatoes, peas, and applesauce. She is also getting better with drinking from a sippy cup and I'm trying to slowly wean her. In the last few weeks we've gotten down to just me nursing her in the morning and evening most days. She loves Catherine and Will so much and laughs out-loud every time we take Eli (the dog) out to potty. I love to see her little personality developing and how she fits right into our family.

Babies' First Christmases

This year was not only Anna's first Christmas, but also our nephews Jasper and Marshall. It was so much fun to be with all the babies for Christmas! We are so glad to have these little guys in our family. I love that our children have cousins so close in age. Actually each of our children has a cousin born with 2 to 3 months. I have never been expecting a baby without having a sister and/or sister-in-law also having babies. It's so much fun and a great way to see how God is blessing our family.

Uncle Jay with Jasper on Christmas night. I think Jasper was a little worn out from the day's festivities.

Will loves to play with Jasper. I can't wait for another year or two when they will be big enough to go outside and play on the Papa's farm together and get into all kinds of mischief :)
Anna loved showing her skills as the big cousin to Marshall. She crawled right over to his chair and would play with him (and steal his pacifier).
Marshall and his mommy snuggling on the day we opened presents. Last year on the day we opened presents we had lots of "hopefully this time next year...." conversations and it was so great to see how God had answered those prayers.
Marshall and his Daddy after a photo shoot for Marshall's namesake--Marshall University. Andy took him to the football stadium and sat him on the 50 yard line for some great pics. The sweet boy may have a complex one day about why all of his clothes have his name on them.
We had so much fun with these little guys and can't wait to see how much they can get into for birthdays this year!

Christmas Highlights

Since it's a few weeks after Christmas, I'll just give you the highlights.

A few days before Christmas, we hosted our 2nd Annual Cookie Decorating party with some friends. We had invited 4 of my friends and their 11 children over to decorate Christmas cookies. It turned out that most of them were sick that day and we only ended up with one friend and kids over for cookies. After helping a table full of small children with icing and sprinkles, I looked at Windy and asked "Where would we have put 8 more children for this??" We had lots of fun making Christmas trees stacked out of sugar cookies and eating all of them. Since I had prepared enough cookies for lots of people, we had plenty to share.

Here's our cute little reindeer! She loved to crawl all over the house with these on.
On Christmas Eve, Catherine and Will wanted to sleep together so that they could get up at the same time on Christmas morning for Santa. We told them they needed to stay in her room until 7am and we would come get them. And they actually did! I don't think we have many more years of being able to contain them this easily.
Jay likes to torture them and make them sit at the top of the stairs and wait to come down. We get out the video camera and make a big event of it. They think this is hilarious and kept trying to sneak a look through the banisters.
The highlight of the Christmas gifts was Will's weedeater. He was sooo excited that he went out at 7:15am in his pajamas to trim the yard.
Anna didn't wake up for Christmas until around 8am. Catherine and Will had so much fun showing her her presents and toys. She loves this little rocking giraffe.
On Christmas afternoon we headed to my dad's house. It gets a little packed in there with 12 adults and 8 children, but we had lots of fun. It started to snow that night and when we woke up the next morning, everything was covered with snow.
So we got in the car and drove in the snow all the way to WV. We had originally planned to leave that afternoon and mostly drive at night, but didn't want to do that in the bad weather. There were a few spots it was a little tricky driving, but not too bad. The kids did great and we managed to only stop once in 7 hours. We didn't tell Jay's parents that we were coming early, so they were very surprised when we knocked on the door and sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." The next morning the guys took Catherine and Will sledding and had lots of fun.
On Tuesday after Christmas we opened presents with the Hatten's. Will loved his new truck with a crane. All of the kids had so much fun opening presents. They are at a really fun age to watch their excitement. They also got really excited about the presents we were giving to other people and of course, offered to help them unwrap those too.
So those are the highlights...I may have a few more pics to share of our time with the cousins too.

Still Here...

We're still here and I promise to update with Christmas pics and info soon. We were out of town from Christmas afternoon until New Year's Day and then came home with a stomach virus.

Let's just say that traveling down the interstate with a baby who keeps vomiting every 20 mins (therefore making the older 2 gag), pulling off the interstate in the rain to take all 3 kids of the car, and getting lost trying to find a Chick-fil-a (who really wants to eat at this point anyway) made for an interesting 7+ hour trip home. Anna perked right up when we got home, so we thought maybe she was just carsick. Even though Will had thrown up a few days before while we were in WV, it was just coincidence, right?

So we put everyone to bed and by 10 pm we heard Catherine "My stomach hurts." Too bad I fed her tomato soup for dinner. Bad, bad idea Mommy. So I stayed with her all night while the poor girl threw up every 30 mins from 10pm until 3:30am. All day Sunday Jay and I were on guard. We kept trying to convince ourselves we didn't feel sick. But by Sunday night, I knew it was coming. And it did. It was a rough, rough night for me which ended by me passing out upstairs as I tried to nurse Anna the next morning at 6:30am.

The kids and I haven't been out of the house or our pajamas in 3 days, but we're all much better now. We even managed to get down the Christmas decorations today. Tomorrow we plan to re-enter the world of the living. I may even take a shower and shave my legs. It will be fabulous. And miraculously Jay managed to escape it (so far....but I may have pushed the envelope by feeding him chili for dinner tonight.)