Naylor Notes: Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas 2011

Quick recap of the year:

Brian got a job as the assistant plant manager/account manager at RE Powell, a fuel/ lubricant distributor
We moved from Brian's parents house in Grandview to a duplex in Yakima in May to be close to Brian's work
We welcomed Thomas to our family on June 16th
Brian, unfortunately, did not get accepted to dental school this year. However, we are very grateful he has a good job that offers a stable alternative career path
We moved into a house in September, which we are renting while the owner's try to sell it
I am serving as the youth Sunday school teacher and Brian is the executive secretary in our ward
Brian and I celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary

It has been another eventful year for our family with many changes. We feel very blessed to have the gospel and so many wonderful friends and family in our lives. We hope that this holiday season is full of peace and joy for you and your families.

Our scanner isn't working so I had to take pictures of the pictures of the kids. Not very clear, but you can still see how cute they are!

Maybrie 2, Thomas 6 months

This holiday season Maybrie is really excited and totally catching onto the idea of Santa Clause and the Nativity story. October and November were hard months for me as I dealt with severe postpartum depression. I simply wasn't myself and was basically in survival mode, only accomplishing the bare minimum. As a result, Maybrie didn't get the attention I would typically like to give her. She spent a lot of time at different friend's houses because I was so sick. The week of Thanksgiving I finally came out of my depression and have been taking advantage of the fact that I feel like myself again. I think I went a little overboard trying to make up for lost time with my kids and tried to make lots of special holiday memories with Maybrie. I took her to lots of free events and tried to do fun, inexpensive projects with her at home. As I look at all we have done, I realize how much fun we have had and am truly grateful for this holiday season and the joy it has brought to me and my little family. Here are a couple of the things we did this past week:

We had a couple friends over to make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. Maybrie was more interested in eating the candy than decorating, so I did a lot of it. :)

Avery, Maybrie, and Sadie

Within a half hour of our friends leaving I found Maybrie already attacking the house and eating the candy off of it. So I snapped a picture real quick before it was gone!

On Saturday, Dec. 17th we went to the Bavarian village of Leavenworth with Jessica and Justin and their kids. In hindsight, it probably wasn't worth the drive and the lighting ceremony wasn't really worth facing the crowd to see. It is probably better to visit without kids. They simply don't understand window shopping, and we spent a lot of our time making sure they didn't touch everything in the shops! We made the best of it though and still had fun being together.