The Most Wonderful Time of Year

December is a hard month to beat---something about the Holidays that just makes all things enjoyable (for the most part!). We were lucky enough to be back home for several days in December and per usual had a packed schedule. 

Since Thanksgiving was so late, technically the first day of December was still the Thanksgiving holiday for us. We kicked off December with a baby shower honoring Hilary and Baby Case. It was held at Scarritt-Bennett and Hilary had so many people show up to shower her with love.

Hilary with her hostesses

Whit and I at the McCormick Christmas party which also served as the 125th anniversary celebration for the company. It was quite the celebration too---over 3,000 people there and the live entertainment was Earth, Wind, and Fire. 

We knew moving the East Coast would be a change of scenery for us, and definitely a change of the perfect weather that we had gotten used to in Northern California. But little did we know, we would have the winter that we had. Never seen so much snow in my life---but it sure proved for some fun snow days and unexpected days at home and off work :)

Our first of MANY snow days together 

Usually I am the one who likes to play in the snow, but since I was baking our bun in the oven it was a little hard for me to roll around in the snow. Whit took that role for us and I think did a marvelous job.  

It definitely didn't stop him from pelting snow balls at me...

Our first toy/gift for Baby Dulin from Pop (my dad)---for some reason I had always had a vision of putting this large giraffe in a nursery. 

Christmas brunch at the Foust house with some of our Baltimore friends

You never really know what goes through kids minds---and when I told the Dalton kids they had a little cousin on the way I was hoping they would be excited for this addition. A couple weeks later my sister shared this with me that Charlie had done in his Sunday School class. One of my favorite things since being pregnant was getting this. 

We had heard about Miracle on 34th Street in this area of Baltimore called Hamden so we decided to have our own little Christmas celebration together before heading home to TN. This is just one of the houses on the block, but they ALL look like this. 

The lights were so bright on the street and the streets were packed with so many people

Then we capped off the night at home with our little Henley and opened our stockings to each other.

Since May we had anxiously awaited the arrival of our newest nephew, Case. And he must have known we were coming because he decided to come into this world the day before we flew home for the holidays. Hilary had an extremely fast and wonderful delivery and sweet Case was born on December 19, 2013. The picture to the left shows a hat my mom had made for him and we were all hoping he'd get here before Christmas to use the Christmas hat. Welcome to the world, Case Blake Robinson. 

We couldn't wait to get to the hospital when we landed and thankfully the new mom and dad were fine with us coming so late. Here we are meeting Case for the first time. What a precious baby!

We spent the rest of the holidays with our families, and of course I didn't capture much of it , but at least a few to remember Christmas 2013. 

Mia loves her Pop

The Holder siblings and our significant others at Mangia---super fun night and the most active dinner experience I've ever had. Thankfully you dance for 1 hour in between courses to make room for more food. Just missed Lauren and Mike being there with us. 

Christmas Eve spent loving on some of my favorite kiddos---just missing a few of them in this photo. 

Loving on another favorite kiddo---the newest one, Case!

The inseparable duo---I'm not jealous at all (yeah right). 

The Dulins Christmas 2013
It wasn't quite the same this year at the Camden family lakehouse without the Robinsons, but thankfully we were still able to make it there to see the rest of the Whitworth family. 

Tom and Carey with the newest member of their family, Charles

The last Christmas just the two of us---I have a feeling our Holidays are about to get a lot more special.