Happy Holidays!

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Christmas 2008

Another Christmas has come and gone and Ray and I loved celebrating for the first time in our new home.

Our Christmas Tree



The week began rainy as Ray and I finished up some Christmas shopping. Luckily, Tuesday was beautiful because Ray had promised to take me to Disneyland. There's not much I can go on being pregnant, but we did go on Small World Holiday (one of my favorites) and then waited about an hour to see the Christmas parade. It was kind of sad to not have Sue there, since we've made watching the parade a sister tradition for the last several years. The plan was to stay for the fireworks, but after some dinner and hot chocolate I was just too worn out - I get way too tired way too quickly these days. We'll just have to make another trip specifically for the fireworks. I know I won't mind. :-)

Small World Holiday with Flat Stanley

Christmas Eve started off with the Hall family tradition of getting some hot chocolate from Starbucks. We usually follow that with a nice walk around the neighborhood, but since it was another rainy day, we decided to rent Mamma Mia and had a fun time singing along to the movie...or I guess I should say that I had fun singing along. That night we went over to Ray's Uncle Joseph's house where we enjoyed a HUGE meal with aunts, uncles, cousins, and little ones. It was fun getting to see a lot of Ray's family two times within the week.

Christmas morning we headed over to my parents to begin the Hall Christmas marathon. I don't know how we do it, but our Christmases end up lasting from 10 in the morning until around 5 in the evening. We had a delicious Christmas dinner - even with the turkey being cooked in the oven since it was raining...again! Being heavily hit with food coma, we all sat down to watch Wall-E. What a cute movie! I even cried, but then I seem to cry at everything these days.

Ray and I had our own Christmas the next morning and have been slowly cleaning up and getting things put away. Next year, we'll definitely have more pictures to share. I did take a picture of Noober's stocking. Since we don't know if the baby's going to be a boy or girl, we've been calling him/her Noober for fun.

The Saturday after Christmas we drove to Downey for the wedding reception of an old family friend of Ray's. Ray had fun getting to see the Holloway family and chatting with a friend from his mission.

Ray with Lee Holloway

We're looking forward to spending New Year's Eve with some friends, though I probably won't last until midnight this year. New Year's Day will be a sad one with no Michigan in a bowl game for the first time since before I was born. But I am looking forward to the Blackhawks/Redwings outdoor game at Wrigley Field!

New Beginnings

Ray and I have always said that once we were pregnant, we would start a blog as a fun and easy way to remember the journey and to share it with friends and family. Well, since we are now officially due in June, let the blogging begin! :-)

So around the beginning of November, I started feeling really crummy. I thought it was probably the flu coming on. I took a day off from school (Election Day) and just slept and lay around. When I returned to school the next day (not feeling much better), my coworker told me I should take a pregnancy test because she thought I had to be pregnant. So the next day I took about five different tests - I wanted to be absolutely sure. And sure enough...they all came back positive! Within the next week, we went to see the doctors and they confirmed it as well.

I'm now at 12 weeks and feeling pretty good. I haven't had much morning sickness luckily. Last Monday we got to go get the first trimester screening done and saw our baby for the first time. It was pretty awesome getting to see and hear the heartbeat and watch him/her moving around. We're very excited to find out if it's a girl or boy in about 6 weeks.

It's hard to believe how much has happened within the last year. We've moved into our first home...Ray luckily kept his math job at Irvine High and continues to coach water polo and recently received the head coaching job for boys' swimming. It's strange how everything seems to be falling into place. We truly feel so blessed to have a wonderful home, great jobs, and now a little one on the way.

So that's where we are right now. We are so excited to be celebrating our first Christmas in our new house and can't believe that next Christmas we'll have a baby to share it with! My New Year's resolution is to keep going with this blog and I know Ray will have fun posting his thoughts. We'll see how long we can last.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!