Christmas, Crawling & More!

Once again, we have to apologize for the delay of this post. Things continued to be crazy since the holidays came to a close and then early last week our Laptop decided it was going to take a dive, hence Shelly's lack of Facebook and Virginia Burch Blog time. :)

Anyway, we had an absolutely wonderful holiday season that we were able to stretch out over the course of a couple weeks. With Chris, Kari, Andrea and Jeff heading to Germany for the holidays, we paid a visit to West Bend the weekend before Christmas to celebrate with Chris, Kari and Greg's Family. A big thanks to Uncle Greg & Aunt Laura, Brooke and Charlie for Kate's new toy, ornament and puzzles. Kate loves them all! On Saturday afternoon, we headed back to GB with Chris and Kari who stayed the night with us and we opened gifts both from them to Kate and vice versa.

We had a wonderful time and it was so nice to have them spend the evening with us in Green Bay. They gave Kate some wonderful things and we hope they enjoyed Kate's gifts from her as well.

The following weekend we spent Christmas Eve with my family and the VanAsten crew. The day was filled with food, fun games, and great company. Later on that evening, we opened gifts and per usual watched "Christmas Vacation" as a family. I may have seen that movie 100 times but I swear, Cousin Eddy gets funnier every year! Thanks to Mimi and Papa Joe for the wonderful gifts for not only Kate, but for Shelly and I as well! One other gift that needs to be mentioned was one from Kate (actually from Deb, Joe and my cousin Andrea). To say it was a DVD slideshow of our journey since Shelly became pregnant until Christmas time, simply doesn't do it justice. I've only cried a few times in my life and yet both Shelly and I were fighting back tears throughout the whole video. I'll have to work on getting it uploaded so we can share it with you all. A special shout-out to cousin Andrea, as I know how much time it takes to put something like that together and to Mimi for putting all that time in to getting video and pictures.

Later that evening, we headed home and awaited Santa's big arrival. We woke up and it was clear he had visited.

I remember last Christmas when Shelly was pregnant with Kate and I couldn't even begin to fathom how much things have changed in such a wonderful way in 12 short months. Well, Kate had a good night sleep and was fired up to see all the presents under the Christmas tree.

She was so excited to get at the presents, she decided to chew her way through the wrapping paper.

Santa brought her some wonderful gifts and a few weeks later she still seems to love them as much as the day she got them. Kate also did a wonderful job picking out gifts for both Shelly and I. Kate & Mom gave me pictures and frames from a Red Wings themed Peanut. The pictures included Kate wearing nothing but a diaper, my Red Wings hat and one of my Red Wing shirts. Adorable to say the least. Kate and I gave Shelly a brag book that consisted of pictures starting from the day she was born all the way up through Christmas.

Once we opened all of Santa's presents, we opened those from Kate's godparents (Uncle Scott and Aunt Jen), Uncle Jeff and Aunt Andrea. Thanks so much to all of you for thinking of her on this most special first Christmas.

After opening presents, we headed to church and then back to Mimi and Papa Joe's house for a relaxed Christmas day. We had a wonderful time laying-low and enjoying each others' company. After all the excitement of the past 10 days, both Shelly and Peanut were beyond worn out and in need of a nap.

Once Peanut woke up, she was happy as can be and kept us all entertained until dinner time.

If the following video doesn't make you laugh...I don't know what will. It's amazing how a baby can have all the toys in the world, yet a simple bag can get the following reaction. Once again Kate doesn't fail to entertain.

After a wonderful dinner we all sat back, watched videos and then spent the night over at Mimi and Papa Joe's. It was a wonderful Christmas filled with so many memories we'll never forget.

As if that wasn't enough to make an entire blog post about, we do have some very exciting news. Last Friday evening after Shelly and I had just gotten home from work, we were in the living room and all of a sudden we witnessed Kate go from laying on her stomach to finally sitting up on her own! We'd been working on that for the past week and all of sudden it just came to her! We were extremely excited for her and we both let out the biggest cheer, to which a huge grin came about on her face. It excited us even more so because we've read that once a baby learns to do that, it typically means they are going to learn to crawl within the next week or two. Well, it most certainly didn't take that long. Less than 24 hours later, Shelly, Kate and I visited our good friends Aaron, Cassy, Tony, Melissa, and their little boy Eli at Aaron's mothers' cottage. We typically get together with them every year around this time and in the middle of the afternoon, Kate decided it was time to become mobile (via the crawl, that is). Shelly and I could hardly believe it, but Kate spotted a book a couple feet in front of her and all of a sudden took off! We were so excited and at the same time so thankful we were both able to witness these two huge milestones. We'll obviously post some video very soon of our little mover.

Well, I guess that finally gets us caught up. Thanks to those that made it through this novel of a post! :) Take care and we promise we'll be more diligent with the updates.