A little Baby Hannah + Bumbo to lighten your day!

There's Much to be Thankful for!

I am so grateful for the holiday season before us!  I just love the holidays, beginning with Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday for some time now.  I just love that we get a few days off to just eat, be with family, and loaf.  Though this may be a little late, there are a few things I am thankful for this year that I wanted to list:

• Our beautiful little family of three.  I am so grateful to have a husband like Tyler and a baby like Hannah, and I feel extremely blessed to have them in my life!
• A job and a house.  We feel so blessed to have Tyler's employment at Du Pont.  He absolutely loves his work, and I am happy because they are so safety conscious :).  We're grateful for a great job and a great little house.
• Family.  There is nothing like being with family.  We drove up to Boston last Thursday morning to be with Tyler's sister and her family for Thanksgiving.  Tyler's parents and brother flew out from Utah to be with us and we just had a wonderful time!  There is nothing like being together as a family, and I am so grateful to have a loving family in my life.  Thank you Kelleys and Cutlers for letting me into your life!

And no post would be complete without pictures, so here are a few from our trip:

These are a few from the granddaughter photoshoot put on by Grandma Kelley .  She provided the darling outfits and Uncle Mark provided the camera and skills.  It was pretty funny and pretty cold.  As you can see, Hannah kinda just does her own thing.  Her and her cousins Rachel and Hailey are pretty stinkin cute.

Top to Bottom Clockwise: Kristen's beautiful Thanksgiving table (her daughter Hailey made us all Thanksgiving cards :) gives you an idea of the delicious feast that followed, Tyler and Bri in Harvard Yard (yes, Bri finally made it to Harvard!) and Ty and Bri on a street in Cambridge.

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Friday, Everyone!

This week has been exceptionally good!

• Hannah now has long conversations with me.  She also learned to drool.
• We started our Christmas shopping at antique shops galore!
• Briana got new shoes from a birthday gift card from Ty
• Briana did pilates videos
• The house is clean

Hope you all have an excellent week!  I am a very poor producer of movies, but I thought you would all like to start the weekend out right with a little bit of Hannah, so enjoy!  And I promise I'll get better at filmography.

The American Downton Abbey

So Tyler and I have recently been obsessed with the British series Downton Abbey, which we love.  When we found out there was a DuPont Estate that had the potential to rival even our beloved Downton, we knew we had to go.

Winterthur Estate was all we dreamed of and more.  Acres of incredible gardens that included a coniferous tree collection (it smelled so good), a fairy garden, an Azalea forest that is supposed to be incredible in the springtime (yes we will be returning), a reflection pool (originally one of the first heated outdoor pools in America), and a sundial garden, we had a great time exploring the grounds.

The house was also phenomenal.  Nine stories high and a separate 42-bedroom groundskeeper cottage, we understood why the DuPont family considered themselves American royalty.

We didn't get to tour the rooms though because we had Baby Hannah with us.  Actually, it's quite a funny story.  We showed up seconds before the tour was supposed to start and, when we were asked whether we would be joining the tour, said yes.  The tour guide started fretting that we would need to put Baby Hannah in a stroller (she was in her carseat carrier) and just didn't know what to do, so she told us to wait and then ushered the rest of the tour visitors away.  So we stood there waiting and Ty said he could just carry Baby Hannah because she was too small for the strollers anyways, but his offer fell on deaf ears.  Turns out, the tour was only for people 8 years and older, and they were very sorry, but were afraid our baby would get bored on the tour.  Yes, of all the words, they used bored.  They said that one of us could take the hour-long tour and then the other, but Ty said we'd rather stick together, so then they offered us free tickets to come back for the family-friendly Yuletide Tour.  Sure, we'd take free tickets! (we got in free anyways this time because of Bank of America, woohoo!)  When they were talking about the Yuletide tour, I felt like Belle in Beauty and the Beast when Cogsworth and Lumiere don't want her to go into the West Wing so they try and distract her by talking about how great their library is.  After these tour guides were done explaining the Yuletide tour, I'm expecting nothing less than a Hogwarts Christmas, by golly. 

So we didn't get to go on the tour.  And to add insult to injury, the tour guides then led us to what they call the "Touch-It Room," an interactive room for kids where they can play with dishes, pots, etc. meant to look like things in the real house.  So she left us with Baby Hannah in the Touch-It Room.  Alone.  And then Tyler was like, "Wait, they're not letting us go on the tour?  And why did they put us in this Touch-It Room?!?! It's roasting in this Touch-It Room!"  Because, though the Touch-It Room was indeed cool for kids ages 2-9 years of age, baby Hannah was by no means interested in it and neither were we.  And it was hot in there.  And we felt dumb.  The tour guide said it was just like what we would have seen on the tour.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it is not, but we will probably never know.

Despite this small incident, we had a great time at Winterthur and you can now expect another post on it when we go on the Yuletide tour in December!  We also think that people don't go out with babies around these parts.  Besides the fact that the tourguides did not know what to do with us and our baby, everyone else always comments on Baby Hannah like she's the first Baby they've seen in a long, long time.

Some Hurricane Footage

Even though I have talked a bit about our hurricane experience, I have had people ask me about video and such.  Here are a few short videos we took of Hurricane Sandy:

Halloween and Fun

Delicious chicken cheese soup with the Kelley scarecrows and baby crow--check 

Fun games and good times with our friends the Archibalds--check

A cute outfit for Baby Hannah--check

Baby Hannah's first halloween a success--check (for the most part :)

Hope you all had a happy Halloween!