Merry & Bright

cards from Tiny Prints
I couldn't be more excited for a holiday season than this year.  I haven't done Christmas card pictures for the last few years and am so happy we did them this year.  

I'm thankful for a beautiful, healthy baby girl who has so much joy and brings us more happiness than I could have imagined.  The other night after we put her to bed Chris and I watched this little video of her laughing at least ten times and couldn't stop talking about how lucky we are. 
I'm thankful for a husband who tells me daily how much he loves me, who makes me smile, takes care of our family and after eight and half years of marriage continually wants to work at and strive to make our marriage stronger.  
I'm thankful for this week to spend with my family and soak in all the memories we get to make this year. 
Mostly importantly right now I'm thankful for this time of the year to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.  It's so easy to get lost in all the wonderful things about this time of the year like traditions, Christmas presents, baking, decorating and making memories.  Which are all things that I love and are special to me.  But I don't ever want to forget the most important reason for celebrating. 
I plan on spending time this week thanking God for sending his Son, for this season of joy, and for blessing me more than I can imagine. 
Merry Christmas!

My favorite kind of Announcement

I was so excited about Addilyn's newborn pictures way before she even arrived.  While I am normally quite the cheap person I knew that I wanted professional newborn pictures and am so glad we decided to spend the money to get them done.  We found this amazing photographer called Lemonade Stand Photography and she did such a beautiful job.  We could not be happier with all of our pictures and I look at them ALL the time.  

She was pretty much the baby whisperer and could move Addilyn into this cutest poses and put her right back to sleep.  There's been many nights I actually wish she was in our house and could help me get her to sleep at night. 

With so many adorable pictures to choose from I had the hardest time picking which ones to use for our baby announcements.  (Don't even ask me how I'll choose which ones to hang in our house.)  Besides having a hard time choosing which pictures to use, I also had a hard time deciding which birth announcement to use as there are so many beautiful birth announcements on Tiny Prints.  I made four different ones and had them in my project cart on their site for many days, until I finally decided on this one: 

We got our announcements within a few days of ordering them and I had them sitting on our counter, looked at them a few times a day and it wasn't until many days after that I realized that the weight said 9 lbs. 13 oz instead of 8 lbs. 13 oz.  I almost cried.  I couldn't believe that I only had about four pieces of information to enter and I messed it up!  I'm blaming it on lack of sleep.  I decided to call customer service just in case they could do something and they were so nice and helpful and are sending me a whole set of new cards.  I couldn't believe it.  I almost told the man that helped me that I loved him.  

Besides birth announcements I love that tiny prints has so many other things you can create.  Before I had Addilyn I started a photo book to document my pregnancy.  Thank goodness I started it before she came because I haven't worked on it since!  I wanted to use my weekly pregnancy pictures and letters to Addilyn. Here are two of the pages: 

And because I couldn't possibly only share a few of her newborn pictures, here are a few more of my favorites.  Maybe everyone in my family will get some kind of personalized photo gift with Addilyn on it for Christmas.  Who wouldn't want that? :) 

Can I add one more thing to my post that motherhood has made me dramatic?  I'm adding that I have the cutest baby in the world.