Another year has come and gone, though it’s hard to believe. In fact, it seems like only yesterday we were huddled around our keyboards worried about Y2K, and now here we are at the dawn of a new decade, the “Twenty-Tens”. As everyone knows, Christmas is my favorite time of year, and it is made all the more special when sharing it with my wonderful family.
Riley and Veronica really enjoyed the Christmas season, and would wait with great anticipation for the outside lights to come on every night. They rushed from window to window oooh-ing and aah-ing, and clapping for the lights. Each morning while they were waiting for breakfast we’d do a countdown to turn on the tree in the living room, and each day they applauded like it was the best thing ever.
December packed an early winter’s punch for Northern VA, with a minor snowstorm on December 5th followed by the unprecedented “Snowpocalypse” from December 18-20. When it was all over we’d gotten about two feet of snow, and I was very thankful for the snowblower Dad gave us as a housewarming gift six years ago.
Candy’s parents flew up from GA on the 23rd to spend Christmas with us, and in spite of a cooking faux pas (I accidentally turned off the oven when I meant to only turn off the timer), our Christmas Eve dinner was very well received (if a little late). On Christmas morning, the twins could not have been more excited to see all the gifts under the tree, including a rocking giraffe! They had a wonderful time and we were glad Candy’s parents could share it with us. There wasn’t much time before we put them on a plane back to GA and we loaded up the car to drive to NY for Murphy Christmas!
Murphy Christmas was tons of fun as always, and it was great to see all the cousins together. They are going to be great friends as they get older being so close in age. The highlight was a party at Aunt Ann’s where most of the US-based Murphy cousins gathered to resurrect one of our favorite traditions. There were 16 second-generation cousins under the age of nine, and everyone was excited by a visit from Saint Nick himself.
While in NY, I also enjoyed a reunion of my 8th grade class from Sacred Heart School, and Candy and I spent a frigid but fun day in the city, visiting the tree in Rockefeller Center, having a nice dinner, and seeing The Lion King on Broadway (highly recommended to everyone!).
November has been another busy month. We started off with our friends’ son Jack’s 1st birthday party. We also celebrated the 14th annual Posse Thanksgiving at our house.
For Thanksgiving we drove down to Candy’s family in Georgia. The kids are still fantastic travelers, and in fact we ended up deciding to drive all the way back on Friday instead of stopping overnight in a hotel as we originally planned. We got back in time to put up the outdoor Christmas lights and to go to the Brambleton Christmas tree lighting.
October has been a busy month! Riley got his first haircut and we had lots to do every weekend.
We started out on October 4th with a trip to Breaux Vineyards for Allan’s surprise 40th birthday party, followed by a trip to Pumpkinville at the Leesburg Animal Park. The following weekend we went to Brambleton’s Fall Fest, where the kids were excited to take a ride on a firetruck provided by the Arcola-Pleasant Valley Volunteer Fire Department. On Sunday the 11th we went to our first Adoptions Together Fall Family Day, where we were happy to see several of the other couples we had met during the waiting parents’ meetings had also gotten their babies, as well as families of all types.
The highlight of our month was our trip to NY for Mom and Dad’s surprise 40th anniversary party. After many weeks of planning, especially by Jeannie and Kaitlin, we pulled off quite a bash. Nikki put together a moving video slideshow (see below) that had everyone laughing and crying. Mom and Dad were so surprised and were so happy to celebrate with so many of our friends and family members. It was a wonderful party!
We finished off the month with Hallowe’en. Candy worked very hard on the kids’ costumes - they were the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna. We were surprised though to find that seemingly no one born that wasn’t born in the 70s seemed to know who they were!
