December Happenings

Thought I would update the blog with some fun things we've been up to recently. I'll start with a picture of our house. First time we've hung lights outside in awhile. 

 Last Wednesday night we visited Tanglewood park to see their lights. It was really neat, and we all enjoyed it. I loved that you get to stay in your car and drive through to see the light displays. I wasn't expecting much, but I was really impressed.

Chloe loved it too. We let her out of the car seat while in the park so she could see the lights. She kept  saying "Hi!" to all the light displays.

Saturday we were suppose to take Chloe to see Santa at Old Salem. Clarke ended up getting really sick, so he couldn't go. My dad was in town visiting so we took Chloe. To say she was less than impressed is an understatement. She was so not into it.

We saw a cute little puppet show first. Chloe wasn't sure what to think. She sat through the whole thing intrigued. After they had sugar cookies, which I think was her favorite part of the trip.

Chloe did love seeing all the cute decorations.

Then we went to see Santa, and I couldn't get a smile out of her.

 Of course she started screaming and even when I tried to sit down with her (which worked last year) she was not having it. And below is the best picture we got, ha!

Out attempt to get a cute picture on the bridge like last year, but once again she wasn't having it.

I'll end with a cute picture of Chloe right before church yesterday. :)

Cookies!

This past weekend we headed down to Raleigh to bake some cookies with Aunt Melanie. Chloe loved  it. 

I think tasting the finished product was her favorite part. This was a fun little weekend trip to see some family during the holidays. Glad we got away and got to bake some cookies!

Christmas Decorations

I thought I would post some pictures of our Christmas decorations this year on the blog. Last year we were in the middle of a move so this is the first time I've decorated this house. I was thinking how a lot of my close friends and family in Richmond won't be able to see them, so here's the next best thing. 

This is on our kitchen counter. The tree was mine when I was little. The handprint of Chloe's we made today, it's on the stump from our Christmas tree. 

Here's a shot of our dinning room. Love the red sparkly trees, forgot I had them until I took them out of the box this year.

Here's our Christmas tree, it's our biggest one yet. Oh, and ignore that cat stuffed animal, not part of the Christmas decorations, just a little girl who is obsessed with cats like me. 

Here's a close up shot of the shelves. Got the print here, it was a free printable. 

Chloe absolutely loves her nativity. She is all about babies, mommies and daddies right now, so she loves the baby Jesus and Joseph and Mary. Here's our nativity.

In our front room I hung our Moravian star so you can see it from the outside.

Hope you enjoyed the little Christmas tour of our house! 

Mistletoe Half Marathon

Confession: I've been living in Winston for about a year and a half and I had never run in a local race. 

I've trained here, ran through many different routes through downtown, Salem Lake, Buena Vista, the Muddy Creek Greenway and all around my neighborhood. But never an official race, and I felt like I just needed to. With training for the half I couldn't get around to running a summer or fall race so I decided to do Mistletoe. It's a fun, smaller local half that everyone is always talking about. I thought since I already did the training for Richmond why not? 

 I was excited. Until I saw the forecast, 80% chance of rain. The high was 58 so I thought at least it won't be cold. But, the rain held off. Around mile 4 it started drizzling, and it did off and on the entire race. Since it wasn't super cold it felt fine. I was so glad because although the course is hilly it goes through some of my favorite parts of Winston and I got to enjoy it. We had fun along the way because we ran this race with the premise of not caring about our times. We treated it like a training run. We always joke on longer training runs that we deserve a medal, so we finally got one.

After the race we tried a new restaurant, and it was so good. Chloe's just like her parents, she loved the chips and salsa. 

And just for fun I put this collage together. This was my third half of the year, it's been a good year of racing!