Baby's First Christmas

Hi Everyone - we hope you all had a fantastic Christmas! We did - it was fun celebrating our first Christmas as a new family. We wanted to share some fun pictures with you all... enjoy!

This picture was taken on Christmas Eve - Sammy's so excited for Christmas!!! He can't wait!

Just because he was so excited for Christmas, I let Samuel hold and shake one of his presents, so he could try to guess what was inside. ;)

There's two things worth noting in the picture below...

1st - Samuel's beautiful blue eyes!

2nd - The Office Trivia Game! Anyone want to play? :)

Christmas Eve at Grandma June's house

Here's Granddad with his 2 youngest grandchildren!

Samuel is waiting patiently for some help with opening his stocking...

"Ya! I love my Cal Poly socks!"

Here's Samuel trying out all of Daddy's fun stocking stuff

And our family photo by our Christmas tree!



Auntie Amy & Sammy on Christmas Day



Grammy is holding Samuel dressed up in his cute Christmas outfit

Last, but not least - here's some fun video for you all... Sammy is laughing so good in this one!

He thought this snowman was just the funniest thing!

4 months old!

Little Sammy is 4 months old now - what a cutie! He had his Dr.'s appointment last friday and got his dreaded shots... he did much better this time and stopped crying once I picked him up! He loves his mommy's milk - so much so that he has officially doubled his birth weight! He weighs in at 16.2 pounds, and is measuring 25.5" long (73rd & 71st percentile)!

He's doing great at naps, and will most of the time let us put him down in his crib while he's still a bit awake and will finish falling asleep on his own! Samuel is still drooling a ton... he went through three bibs yesterday! He has just discovered he can touch his toes, and now everytime I change his diaper, he either grabs and pulls his knees up or will grab his toes! His most recent new "trick" is squealing as loud and as high as he can! He l-o-v-e-s to do this and is quite pleased with himself! We caught it on video - see below!

And of course - here are some more cute pics of our little guy...

We spent a day at the Wild Animal Park - look at his cute little smile!

Here's Jess & Sam hanging out in the backyard

Touching his toes!
He's still hanging on to those blue eyes!

Samuel with his Great Grammy & Grampy

(Sammy is their firstborn's firstborn's firstborn!)

...and here's Samuel using his 'wubbie' to dress up as a Wiseman

...we wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas Tree, Christmas Lights, and Reading at an Unusually Young Age

Jessica Claus came early this year and did an absolutely fabulous job decorating our Home Depot special Noble Fir. When Santa comes this year, he'll probably not want to leave as he stares wondrously at the most beautiful tree he's ever seen! Not to worry though, after he eats the cookies that I bake him, he'll be up that chimney so fast that he'll probably leave all the other kids' gifts behind. Sneaky, sneaky I know, but I think it might actually work!

Decorating the outside of the house for our first Christmas here was a blast! I can't tell you how much fun I had standing at the top of my 10 foot ladder as it was leaned way too steeply against the tree trunk. I had to hug the sap-laden tree to prevent myself from taking the tumble backwards! Good times, good times :) You'll probably notice that the trunk closest to the house isn't quite as high as the other trunks. Well it's for good reason. The top section of the lights burned out and after thinking about the harrowing task of going through them light by light to find the dud, I decided that I would personally smack anyone who had the gall to make fun of my tree!

Need I say more?......

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. . .
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At this pace, I plan on retiring in 8 months. Good job Samuel :) Daddy is so proud!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!

Look what I can do!!

So Samuel started laughing about 2 weeks ago - he's still trying to figure it out completely - but its so cute to hear his little laugh! This is the first time we've caught it on camera! He's a little camera shy, and every other time we've tried to film him laughing he stops and just stares at the camera! Well, tonight there was success - I hid the camera from him and he had no idea... haha! Enjoy!

Samuel "Frequent Flyer" Davidson

So we just returned from our vacation visiting Andrew's relatives. This means Samuel had to endure two 4+ hour non-stop flights to Georgia and back! Sammy was such a good little passenger... he slept about 1/2 the time in the air - and during all the take-offs & landings (while happily sucking on his paci)! He got extra special attention from all the flight attendants and one even tried to set him up with a baby girlfriend about 6 rows back!

Georgia in the fall is beautiful! We were fortunate enough to see all of the trees with their red, orange and yellow leaves! As tourists, we visited the Coca Cola Museum/Factory, climbed up Stone Mountain, and ate at Atlanta's famous "The Varsity" restaurant (think g-r-e-a-s-y goodness). But our favorite part of our trip was spending so much time with our Uncle Ron, Aunt Barbara, all of our cousins & their 10 kids! Jessica had never met any of the cousins or their kids so it was especially fun to get to know them. We stayed 1 or 2 nights at each of the cousins' houses. Samuel's favorite part was meeting baby Seth - who is just 5 days older than him! We got lots of photos of the two babies together - what cuties!

It seems our 9-day trip just flew by - and before we knew it we were back on the plane heading home. We're really looking forward to seeing our Georgia family again for a visit sometime soon! :)

Enjoy the photos below!

Ready for take-off!

We spent the first couple days hanging out Mark, Wendy & their kids.

Here's Mark and his 2 boys Will & Ryan

And Wendy & Maria -

Maria was such a cute helper with putting Sammy's paci back in his mouth if it fell out!

"Maybe he wants his paci?" :)

Little Betsie loved to hold baby "Samol"
We had a fun-filled day with Christy & her kids Caleb, Daniel & Betsie: Coke Museum, lunch at the Varsity & an afternoon hike at Stone Mountain!

Here are the true colors of Autumn!

Here's Stone Mountain's carving... we're about to climb to the top! ...and we made it!

The beautiful lake near Uncle Ron & Aunt Barbara's house

All the boys loved having Andrew around

and Samuel loved spending each day with his Daddy :)

Here are the two fall babies - Seth & Samuel - so cute!

Here's Hannah

The girls and the 2 babies...

The day before we left everyone gathered for the day - here's a shot of everyone!

What a busy house it was!