Baby's First Christmas

We avoided traveling for Christmas this year with Stella being so little, and for the first year since we have been married we stayed home for the holidays. We missed our families, but it was very low key and relaxing, and we really enjoyed ourselves being home.

Heading out to Christmas Eve dinner with some other families from church

Stella was too cute in her jeggings. Or as Dustin calls them, her pajama jeans.

We came home and opened our Christmas pajamas.

I loved having Christmas on Sunday. We had a great church meeting and then came home and cooked a yummy brunch and opened our gifts.

Then we had Christmas dinner with a pork loin, potatoes and brussel sprout gratin. I got a new ice cream maker for Christmas from my parents and wanted to make some vanilla ice cream to go with our apple pie for dessert. But when I checked on the ice cream after it had been churning for the recommended time, I realized that it was still runny and unfrozen. Confused, Dustin looked at the manual and realized that I was supposed to freeze the rotating bowl to the ice cream maker first before using. Wow, must have missed that part! No wonder it wasn't freezing the mixture! It takes about 24 hours to freeze the bowl, so no homemade ice cream for us! I got a good eye roll from my husband for that one.

Besides that, our Christmas was just wonderful. Even though Stella is small, it was still so exciting to have our first Christmas with our first child. It seemed to make everything that much more special!

Kirtland,OH

We headed over to Kirtland to check out their nativity display. They have about 600 nativities set up and it was such a great way to kick off our Christmas weekend.

Christmas Randoms

Putting the star on the tree I couldn't resist

Hanging out by the tree

I tried a few new recipes this year like Candy Cane Kiss Cookies, and White Chocolate Peppermint Brownies. But still my faves are Peppermint Meltaways. Can you tell I like peppermint?

Boxed and ready to go!

Newborn Pictures

I am now just getting around to posting these from when Stella was about two weeks old. She was so tiny.

Steph and Lucy Lou's visit

It was so nice to have my sister come to visit from Washington. It should not be allowed to live so far away from your sisters! Lucy was so cute and asked where the beebee (baby) was every morning as soon as she got up. And by the end of their stay she was saying 'baby Stella' like a pro.Yay, Steph is finally an auntie!

Stella's Blessng Day

Stella's blessing day was just perfect. Since she was still so little we decided to bless her at home with our family instead of doing it at church. Dustin did a great job with the blessing and had us all in tears.

We were going to bless Stella at 10am, and at 9:30am there was a knock at my door. I ran downstairs to open it, thinking it was Dustin's family who were staying at a hotel nearby.

I open the door and to my surprise my father was standing in the doorway! I had no idea he was coming. He took a red eye flight out of Seattle with a super long layover to Cleveland and then drove from Cleveland to Erie just in the nick of time to be here for the blessing. I was shocked and burst into tears. It was so great to now have both grandpas in the blessing circle.

Grandpa Rockwood helping Stella get all dressed in her white

My sister Stephanie and her daughter Lucy flew in the night before for Stella's special day.

We were so blessed and grateful to have many family members visit us. Thank you all for coming!

One bonus to having the blessing at home was that we were able to skype my mom in from Seattle so she was able to hear and see everything. I love technology.

My sister made Stella's headband. I thought it turned out so cute.