paris' christmas!

we spent the other half of our time home with the paris'! everyone under one roof is kinda crazy, but kinda crazy fun! neil & jody & their brood get the basement. we get the guest bedroom & melissa usually stays over on the couch not wanting to miss a minute of my attention... er, a minute with the kids, i mean!

denise wanted a picture of all three in these santa hats. it was hilarious attempting this task. this is by far the closest we got to them all a)sitting b) with the hats on c) sortof smiling/at least looking at the camera. & finn wasn't the worst at getting up & walking away as you might imagine. mr. late-to-the-walking-game-gabester was! grandpa, melissa & bryan were hilarious trying to convince them to sit while i just kept firing away.


aunt lissa & evie.
our belated christmas morning affair! tons of paper & tons of presents!
one happy little girl.
grandma dee & papa ron got finn this recycling truck & it's his favorite. she made a comment that the only bad review was that it's loud. grandma dee dee, i have thought on several occasions about calling you while he is pushing that puppy around our house- shuey, loud does not describe it! but he does love it & it's a recycling truck so... i love it too.



i had told everyone that i was getting finn a kitchen set for christmas, so any presents that would work well with that theme would be perfect. so creative aunt lissa & uncle jeff made some felt food for finn, & they are so stinken cute. he loves it & pretends to eat it like cookie monster. nom nom nom!
this boy is still obsessed with trains. i bought him a letter set that spelled out paris & gabe got his name!
bryan did it. i don't know what he did, but all fingers are pointing at him!
i think this one is cute.
he is attempting to fit in a tiny little box...
finn was banned from the kitchen. i'm not sure how they caught on to the fact that he was sneaking cookies out of there for me...

they made out like bandits with the meyers!


frozen blueberry face.



so sweet.
they dropped finn & i off at the airport... i can't for the life of me remember why bryan wasn't with us... hmm.

ah. there's our christmas! it was a long two weeks since i wasn't feeling so hot- but lovely to be with our family as always.

resch christmas gathering

paul & kathy had us over for a brunch of yumminess.

finn is not spoiled at all. three ladies, ready & willing to wait on him hand & foot.

pop pop's here!
present time!
pop pop got him an elmo computer. it's very cute but the end of my sanity. it has cards you can switch out & he's obsessed but can't do it himself.

he likes it just a lil bit.

he loves his aunt kacky.
& his auntie.
snow.
it was so cold but these ladies took him out without coats on!

feed this child some phlen's donuts & he's a happy boy! so is his mama.

paris' next!

miller christmas up first.

we arrived in louisville on the 23rd of december. the flight went well from what i remember... but i don't really remember :)

we had our immediate families meet us at ww. cousins with the intentions of telling them about our baby on the way. no one knew but my sister. i was so excited to get their reactions (i expected nothing but excitement since this time was a lil different) but they weren't what i'd hoped/planned for at all. nothing ever is i guess.

i had created a shirt for finn to wear. it was a picture of him doing a happy scream & the shirt said big brother on it. the plan was for everyone to see the shirt at the same time & figure it out, easily.

no one really showed up on time, so we kept finn's coat on as long as we could. then we took it off & put him in the high chair that was, ironically high enough that you didn't see his shirt at all, so no one noticed. everyone slowly rolls in throughout the dinner at some point. my sister is about to leave & we have everyone there (except my brother & bryan's brother, both out of town) so i say- well, don't leave without giving finn a hug, so she takes my cue & picks him up. denise at the other end of the table says "does that say big brother? " everyone kinda looks around the table with odd faces & i do an awkward giggle. my mom responds to something my sister says with "you're pregnant too!!" and rolls her eyes. why she thought steph was preggers i'll never know. we have to clear it all up by saying, yes, yes yes we're pregnant. almost 3 months. due in july. everyone stays in their seats. everyone kinda goes back to eating. & that's how our families received the news of resch/paris number 2. anti-climatic. bryan felt like it went way better than i thought, but that's how i remember it. luckily our extended families got super excited & i was relieved about that!

so onto the miller christmas. a few random pictures:

aunt teecee & finn. i found this awesome sweater at the goodwill! yeah christmas outfit that cost $5!
sweet lil kennedy.
not a fan of bob... err. santa.
but bryan's a big boy now so he loves him!
so does jeff!
it was recession themed christmas this year. so the parents all gave us one re-gift. something of ours from our past. except shoogy- she got some new awesome pajama's! i'm sure she wears them every night at slu!
finn wasn't even okay being in this close of a proximity to santa.
finn & kennedy. best of cousins!


christmas morning.

the knights go up the choo choo track, right?
good lord did nana & aunt rae rae spoil him.
oliver is so confused.
the boys putting together his new track. he loved it.
the weather had been so nice in phx that we were afraid how finn would react to not getting to be outside at all during our 2 cold weeks in ky. so aunt rae rae took him on a walk, despite how brrrrr it was!

resch's next!

our christmas party.

it's almost st. patrick's day & i'm finally getting around to blogging about christmas.
hope you folks are okay with being patient with me, especially since another kiddo is making it's way into our family & without help from the papa on this here blog it might take a hit. or shall i say a bigger hit than it already has?

i love having parties. we don't do it that much anymore- we use to have at least two big ones: christmas & halloween. this year's christmas party was low key in the amount of people that showed up but fancy in the sense that my good friends johnny & amanda (from the samba project) played some music for us. we did a lil trade & it was so cool.

on decorations... i didn't buy any, except for the flowers. can't go wrong with fresh flowers. i did make a few wreaths out of shell pods in our backyard. finn helped me collect them & then i cut circles out of cardboard boxes & glued those puppies on. i think they're quite purty. we finally got rid of the broken t.v. that had been sitting there collecting dust for over 4 months & i made that a christmasy station. a few holiday cards we'd received & some candles.

& a few of the guests: tina & kyan. sweet boy!
sarah, tim & heather & of course finnster.

they were so great with letting him play & explore.

okay that's it. sorry, i didn't take many pictures. i wasn't feeling so hot that night- pregnant but no one knew about it yet!

photos from christmas in louisville are next! & if you live in phx please check out samba project- they're an amazing group & they have a few live shows this weekend!!!!

having fruit trees in our yard...

is pretty awesome. we have four fruit trees: a huge grapefruit (which unfortunately goes mostly to waste because neither of us likes grapefruit, so we try to give it away) two orange trees & a lemon tree. we've had a blast showing finn how to pick them & then peel & eat!



and they really are delicious!

happy monday!