The TOTAL duck experience!

Best Friends! I love my mom! She is a great woman!

Christian not to sure about his Duck!

Christian and his MiMi! My Step dad refuses to be in any of
the pictures! My goal to do a photo shoot with him and my :-)
mom and their grand kids! We will see how he feels about that

There is the duck! Ready to be eaten. Then even go as far
as plating the pancakes and fixing your duck roll. It was a really
neat experience. Did I mention that the Skin of the Duck makes
the pancake rolls soo good!

Avah and her Daddy!

When my mom and step dad come in to VA we always try to take them some place special. So this time I let Colin pick and he decided to go to the Peking Gourmet Inn. Famous people have been there including former president Bush, John Travolta and the list goes on. The Peking Gourmet Inn is known for it's deep fried duck. The duck comes out on a platter where a waiter carves each little think slice in front of you. We decided as a group to get the Group B diner. This consisted of several courses. First came a white asparagus soup, then slices of cucumber(for the duck) which they don't tell you. C ate most of the cucumber before the duck even came out. Following the soup was steamed dumplings, duck with VERY good pancakes, orange beef(also very tasty), some kind of chicken(I do not recommend), fried rice, Bok Choy, and last but not least Mango ice cream(alright). The whole experience was quite interesting. And last but not least a table full of fortune cookies!

Toys!!!

Christian reading his books!

Avah is such a mess these days!

She enjoys reading about d700's Just like her mommy!

Christian was having a blast with buzz light year today!

Avah on Rodi

So it seems that we are enjoying all of our new toys! The kids got super cool toys as Christian would say and I got a pretty awesome toy as well. I spent most of the afternoon chasing my kids around with my new camera!!

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you Love, Peace and Joy this Holiday Season!
Merry Christmas! Love, The Welch's!

Christmas Eve 2010!

The three little rascals. I am sure that Karis will be in the middle of this
pile next year!

Before our Christmas Eve Service!

The kids and their grandparents.

Avah enjoying reading with her PAPA!

My favorite picture! A special moment that has been frozen in time!

When the children were born we decided that we would celebrate Christmas in our own home. My mom and step dad decided to come to VA this year to spend Christmas with us and our kids. Every Christmas eve we attend our church's beautiful Christmas Eve service. This year and last year Christian was able to to sit through the service with us. I love being able to worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the night before his special day! After church we came home and had the Smith's over for diner! It has been three years since we have been doing it and it's such a wonderful time. The kids exchange gifts and we eat until we cannot eat anymore.

White Elephant Party!

Someone thought Ann needed to add to her collection of utensils!

Facial anyone!

Can't catch me!

Still Laughing at this one!

Nice Robe!

Teri and Laura! I am so glad that we have a friend like Teri who
loves our children as if they are her own!

The past Sunday our "old sunday school class" had a white elephant gift exchange. We had a great time with lots of great food and did I mention we had great gifts as well. The normal Sunday school tradition is to buy 1 nice gift(those were few) and 1 bad gift(those were plenty) All of the bad gifts are left around the persons house who hosted the white elephant exchange. Luckily for JT and Nanette they managed to find most of the gifts around their house the next day. I guess next year that means we will have to do a better job at hiding them!!! One person suggested that we have name tags. We all know what everyone would have done with those!!! Anyways thank you to JT and Nanette for hosting this and thanks to Alison for helping plan it. We all had a great time.

Off to the City!

Christian and Carter in front of the US Capital Building.
This will be a cool picture when they are much older and we tell
them about all the play dates that we took to the city!

Me and the kiddos!

The thought of a living wreath is awesome but Mariah and I agreed
that we would both kill them in days! lol

I called my girlfriend Mariah up and asked her if she wanted to take the kids to the city! She was in! Being from the country the thought of the city used to totally scare me! But now I love it!!! I love the tall buildings, all of our nation's history, and the driver's NOT! I also love it that the kids get to learn a lot when we go out. Today we went to the Botanical Gardens to see there annual train exhibit. This year they featured Thomas and Percy the boys were very excited about that. We also parked in a parking garage next to the Nation's Capital Building! The boys had a great time running around in the open grass and enjoyed looking at the huge Christmas tree. Once inside the exhibit the boys and girls were all over the place. I actually left my camera battery in the car and had all of my equipment with me so I didn't get to take any pictures. Luckily on our way out we swung by Mariah's house to pick up her camera! Thank you God. We had a great time and I already planning our next adventure out to the big city.

FIRST SNOW!

This child LOVES the snow!

So sweet!

I am not surprised at all that Avah loves the snow.
I wish I loved it as much as my kids do!

So we had our first snow of 2010 the other day. Many people were worried about the snow and the icy roads and I have to admit I laughed. That was def. not a lot of snow compared to last year that is. Here are a couple of pictures of the kiddos enjoying the white fluff.

Thanksgiving, Jingle All the Way, and so much more!

Home group progressive diner! I love these women.

Our Shabby Chic Hotel Room
The beds in this room were just fabulous!

Me and Mariah infront of the National Christmas tree.
Note to self: The 50 trees are such a disappointment do not
drag kids out of the house in cold weather to see them.

Christmas craft with the kids! Thanks Dava for sharing the idea!

All of my running gals at the W bar!

With the rush of the holiday season I have not been able to blog as much. We had an awesome Thanksgiving with my mom and a surprise visit from my step dad. We also had the Burrell's over for diner that night. I stuffed my tiny town house kitchen with two tables and we were all able sit down together and have diner. My girlfriends and I entered a 10k race this past weekend. We had a blast! The race took place on the tidal basin in downtown D.C. Of course it didn't rain all week and decided to rain on race day. Our hotel was beautiful and I am so grateful for my husband who stayed home with the kids! I just love him. After many prayers it was only a light drizzle so we dressed up in our tutu's and frolicked out the doors. My ipod died several days before the race so it was a long lonely hour run in the rain! I still enjoyed it though. The photography business has been as crazy as ever. I have so many blog post to catch up on that after the holidays I may just post one holiday blog with thousands of pictures on it! The kids are doing well. We baked strawberry thumbprint cookies last week for Mops, Gingerbread men tonight, and we also made a Christmas craft as well. Christian loved getting his feet painted and Avah well she hated it. Colin's mom and dad came in last week to celebrate and early Christmas with us and that was a blast. We always enjoy when family comes into town. There are so many more Holiday festivities coming up and I am trying to slow down and just remember that Jesus is the reason for this Holiday Season. Lord I thank you for all of the blessings that you have bestowed upon me in my life.