A December to REMEMBER

Note: Picture heavy post! 

This past December was full of lots of activity and blessed memories for the Noneman household. It was so wonderful to get to see the first holiday season through Carolyn's eyes.  She is at such a fun and curious age right now that it made the whole Holiday Season so memorable, even when she pulled over the Christmas tree!  After the Thanksgiving holiday we started the holiday season when we had Carolyn's Holiday Program with her day care.

 Carolyn is in the very back on the left when looking at the stroller.  The babies don't really perform they just go for a walk to be introduced!

Then after a few more weeks of school for Carolyn and a few more weeks of work for Jesse and me, we headed off to Arizona for an early Christmas celebration with Jesse's family.  The 4 hour flight out to Arizona was a little, ok, a VERY LONG flight.  Carolyn only slept about 20 minutes which meant that the rest of the flight was spent trying to entertain a busy 10 month old who just wants to crawl around and touch anything and everything!  (Luckily the flight back she slept almost the whole time thanks to a little friend called, Children's Benadryl!)  It was a great visit with family and Carolyn loved her new stuffed white tiger (Blanca) that Grandpa Tom had waiting for her at the airport.  The morning after we arrived Carolyn was the highlight of many a elderly people at Great Grandma Anne's church.  Carolyn absolutely loved the Christmas performance that Anne directed with all of the lights, music, and people moving around and she made Great Grandma Anne's day when she waved to her while Anne was on the stage being thanked for all of her hard work.  A lot of the time in Arizona was spent just hanging out with family and Carolyn really enjoyed getting to know her cousins and trying to play with them.  She also LOVED the animals at the Phoenix Zoo.  Grandma Judy also bought her a wonderful animal book to remember her Phoenix Zoo visit by.

 Feeding ducks at the park

 It's hard work going to the zoo

 Reading the new zoo book with Grandma Judy

Once we got back to Indiana we had a day and a half at home before heading up to Fort Wayne for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Once again Carolyn seemed to have so much fun taking in all of the festivities of the season.  We attended Christmas Eve service at Trinity English (where we got married and she was baptized) and they had the perfect set up for a children's service.  Even though Carolyn was a little young to participate in the bell ringing, when she saw other kids shaking something in their hands she shook her toy keys as well! It really was too cute! After church we drove Carolyn past the famous Fort Wayne Santa.  As kids Erica, Nick, and I attended the lighting ceremony every year with our parents and another family at the Summit Club the night before Thanksgiving.   I remember how we would squish our faces up against the glass and look down from what seemed like a million stories up to see the display lit up.  After we left that night we would always drive past and see the light display from the ground.  I can't wait for Carolyn to actually remember the display. After church and Santa we went to my parent's friends annual Christmas party where Carolyn had her first real interaction with climbing stairs.  Christmas morning we woke up and had Carolyn open a few presents so she could get some new toys to play with and then we went about preparing for the get together with the Holt family.  After a great meal and some present opening we all sat down and watched the classic "Christmas Vacation" by a fire.  We opened presents in the evening, much to my brother's chagrin, but it was a really nice way to end the Christmas celebration.

 Christmas Eve

 The famous Fort Wayne Santa

We also took Carolyn to her first Butler Basketball game on the New Years Eve Day.  To say that she enjoyed it would be the understatement of the year.  Between meeting Blue II (the live Butler mascot), the music, cheerleaders, and all of the other activities that go along with a basketball game we literally couldn't get her to pay any attention to us!  They also had the perfect half-time performance for Carolyn- performing dogs!  Jesse and I really think that may be her favorite day of 2011.  As you will see from the pictures she had much better things to do than to cooperate with picture taking!

 Dog half-time performance

She finally succumbed to some sleep until the cheering at the end of the game woke her up

Final score- Go Dawgs!

Jesse is also getting ready to turn the big 3-0 so he had a birthday party on Friday evening at the brewery Thr3e Wise Men.  It was supposed to be a surprise but I forgot to sign out of my Google account after my last blog update so he saw my email and all of the evite responses.  Regardless, it turned out to be a great evening celebrating with friends.

That's the long and short of our crazy December.  Hope that all of you had a wonderful holiday season as well!