It's a....

Boy!

Surprise! We found out on Christmas Eve.

In mid-December, I drank some apple juice and went to a 3D ultrasound place where I closed my eyes while the tech determined Baby L 2.0's sex. She then sealed the results in an envelop and signed over the seal so I wouldn't peak (I was very tempted!!)

Then, we followed Sarah's cute idea over at Life Sweet Life . We gave the envelope, a bunny, two onesies (boy and girl) and a box to Veronica. She opened the envelope, chose the correct onesie for the bunny, and wrapped it up for our Christmas reveal. I tried and tried to convince her and Josh to at least give me a hint, but they stayed strong and didn't even give us the box until right before we were leaving for our holiday travels.

We wanted lots of family to be around for the reveal (and there was no way I was going to last until after we finished presents on Christmas morning) so Stephen let me open the box early on Christmas Eve. There was a lot going on, but you can see above our surprised faces when we learned that Baby L 2.0 is a boy!

Here's the video...

We are very excited for Baby Boy Lamont!

Holiday Decor

Both Stephen and I love the holidays and we were excited to decorate our new house this year.

(This is not the best picture of our tree and mantle, but the good ones have

Chase's presents in them so you'll have to wait for that post!)

We needed a place to hang holiday cards. I saw this idea on some other blogs and it turned out really cute. There is ribbon behind the cards, but you can't tell because there were so many beautiful cards to hang. Next year we'll hang more ribbon columns.

A few shots of the drinks and food from our Open House:

We hung large (vintage?) Christmas lights around our dining room and put up Grammy's holiday village.

Not the best picture of our bookshelves, but you can almost see the sockings and the nativity on the left...

We didn't forget about the outside....

We were unfortunately victims of the switch to LED Christmas lights. Next year we'll need an LED string for the tree on the left (unless we take it down).

And finally, our snowman. We loved the irony when we lived in Florida, but now it's borderline tacky. I was terrified that our neighbors would hate it, but we only heard good things. Guess we'll keep him around. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll have a white Christmas and he won't be out of place at all!

Happy Holidays

This will be one (of many) posts about our very joyful holiday season. As you probably know, there was a lot going on and a lot of photo opportunities. I'll try to spread them out.

First, we had to go pick a tree.

Turns out Chase did not have much of an opinion on which one we chose, which was good because his Daddy had strong opinions! Luckily that meant that he picked the perfect tree.

After seeing Daddy under the tree to straighten it so many times, Chase thought that was what you do with trees...

Then it was time to make cookies. I wasn't sure that Chase would be into this, but he actually liked it a lot.

We had a Holiday Open House with lots of friends and neighbors. As you can imagine, we didn't have much time to snap photos, but I did manage to capture Chase and Nasya standing together. Chase is always on his best behavior around Nasya and even stood still!

You may have noticed that we did not post a picture of Chase with Santa. We went to the mall and he would not go anywhere near Santa. Rather than subjecting him (and me) to hysterics, we decided to ride the choo-choo around the mall. Afterwards, the conductor helped Chase ring the bell.

Then we attempted to take some Christmas photos. The problem is that one of us needs to hold/entertain Chase while the other one takes the pictures. Even then, there are a lot of shenanigans involved...

A week later, we finally figured out what we needed to get a good Christmas picture of Chase...namely his chair, two hats, and a candy cane.

Happy Holidays! Next up, our holiday decor...