Christmas Fun

I ventured to Panera today to get ahead on my faculty responsibilities for Purdue and I ended up getting some "quality time" with my laptop, ha! I figured while I was here that I would go ahead and post a blog with some of the pictures we've taken thus far:

Here's "Uncle" Cory and baby John. He is one of the sweetest babies we have ever known. His disposition is very cheery and loves to be cuddled by anyone.

"Auntie" Julie and baby John. He's 6 mo. old, it's hard to believe that the last time we saw him was the day he was born. His mother is expecting baby #2 in May, and it appears to be another boy.

Jackson opens his gift from "Uncle" Cory and "Auntie" Julie - a Purdue Pete stuffed doll, and before you assume that I'm trying to groom him for his Big Ten education (ha!), he actually became smitten with Purdue Pete from a post card that I sent out to Cory's parents when I was hired on at Purdue. So, we couldn't help but to encourage his fondness to Purdue Pete!

What Christmas would be complete without sugar cookies!! Believe it or not, there were MORE cookies than this being baked at the Albert homestead!

Here are my cookie designs, I was polka dot and tie-dye crazy this year!

Here's my dear husband, working his icing magic! He was a good sport :)


Cory's parent's Christmas Tree, it was beautiful.

I was able to call each of my family members yesterday (a few of them more than once!) to wish them a "Merry Christmas", and it's just not the same as being able to see them. This will be an ongoing challenge for us each holiday, trying to spread our time between New York and Northern Indiana in order to see our families. We were hoping that Cory's cousin AJ, who is serving in Iraq, would be able to call home yesterday, but we're still anxiously awaiting to hear from him.

Last night after the family get together came to an end, Cory's parents, and his sister decided to go to the movies with us. We saw the new National Treasure "Book of Secrets" movie and it was great. They left the ending open for a third movie to be made which was exciting. This evening we're all heading to a local Rochester restaurant called The Brook House for dinner, which serves amazing Italian cuisine.

We'll post more once we return to Indy...right now it looks like we'll be leaving on Friday.