December 14 - Say Cheese

December....this month invokes visions of cold winter nights, warm sweaters, snowmen, skiing and hot chocolate by the fireplace. Since we live in Florida and I can't partake in (what I would consider) traditional winter festivities around holiday time, I settle for the next best things-decorating a fabulous tree and creating a nice holiday card. Okay-I admit that filling out holiday cards never used to be a super exciting activity, but with our recent addition, I could not wait to get started!

I'm a tad embarrassed to admit that I started brainstorming picture poses before Julia was even born. I had some great ideas: put Julia in a stocking so just her arms and head were sticking out [she is way to big for that]. Another idea was to pose her with Amelia and Guinness: Jules with a Santa hat, the pooches with reindeer antlers [however, thinking this one through..I'd never successfully posed the dogs together, so thinking I could do it with props AND an infant was probably a little lofty). I was still trying to figure out something cute when Julia received two holiday outfits: a beautiful dress from Nonni Cook ('nonni' means grandparent in Italian, my mother prefers this over the traditional 'grandma' or 'nonna') and an adorable Santa suit from Great Grandpa. She also received a really cute knit cap from Grandma Yamo that is kind of holiday-ish. So-I thought to myself-no problem, I'll just dress Julia up and snap some photos; it will be easy! Well-as you can imagine, it was anything but easy. Julia was not a happy camper in the dress and by the time I got around to taking her photo in the Santa outfit and the hat, she had (and still has) an ear infection and cold. So between her sneezing, watery eyes and just plain not feeling well..it wasn't the photo session I had envisioned.

Anyhoo-these are a few pictures that I didn't use for the holiday card (you will have to wait to see what those are..I plan to mail them out this week) but I still think Julia looks really cute in all of them. I'm also including a recent shot from bath time, I can't resist, she is such a cutie!!

And our little bean is on antibiotics. She hates them, but she is doing much better.

And we got our tree today and are in the process of putting on the lights. Well..JD is putting the lights on. It is a Yamo family tradition to wrap each branch with lights so it takes 15+ strands of lights and a lot of time!! After JD gets all the lights on, I add the ornaments. I'll definitely post some photos once it is totally done!