Best of Holiday Memories 2013

We all had a fantastic time in Virginia last weekend, and here are highlights:

Here are our super happy kiddos...SO excited to go visit family. Clearly, this is the beginning of our 10-hour car ride.

We lucked out on unseasonably warm weather, so we got to enjoy our picnic lunch OUTSIDE in beautiful West Virginia!

While in Virginia Beach, the weather just got better and better (in the upper 70's!), so we spent a lot of time outside...even enjoying the beach!

And we discovered a hidden gem in VB: the Military Aviation Museum! It houses one of the largest private collections of WWI and WWII era aircraft in the world! It was really neat to see all of the planes and "ride" in some of them, too!

Did I mention we got to see cousins Colin, Declan and Alyssa?? More picnic time!

Then we headed to NoVa to celebrate Christmas with Nonno, Nonna and the whole gang! We even got all dressed up!

A few gifts were extra popular this year. One was the building blocks sets that Uncle Ralph made for Sammy, Brie and Lucas...out of composite deck material! Gotta love gifts that inspire creativity AND cannot be hurt!

Also a HUGE hit were the Superman and Supergirl costumes that all three cousins received. Pretty darn cute! (Aren't those fake abs a riot?!)

And the icing on the cake...er, I mean house...was decorating the gingerbread house! The kids loved doing this together, and they were surprisingly disciplined...eating minimal icing and candy!!

Didn't they do a beautiful job??

A big highlight for me during our trip was visiting Beth in Baltimore and getting to see two dear friends. Here I am with Pam and Amy! We all worked together at Notre Dame; Amy was my boss (we shared an office for four years!) and Pam was my colleague and graduate school classmate. It was SO wonderful to see them and catch up in person!

Then we headed home...and the best part was that we stopped and visited more old friends along the way! Here are Firefighter Grace and Ranger Sammy (buddies since birth) having a grand, old time. We loved catching up with Grace's whole family. :-)

So that was our holiday! It was the perfect wrap-up to a tremendous year! Can't wait for more fun with family and friends in 2014!