Christmas trip to Georgia!

The girls, the dogs, Mike and I drove out to Georgia right before Christmas to spend time with Mike's family. The drive went incredibly well, considering how packed our car was! The girls let us drive in 3 hour segments both ways, so we made much better time than we were expecting. The portable DVD player was a life-saver, but we had to do without it on the way home because it stopped working! That meant lots of Veggie Tales and Psalty cds!! It was great to see our family again! Alex, our nephew, is 6 now and such a fun little boy! Both of the sisters are pregnant (Laura is pregnant with a little girl and due in May; Kim is having triplets, all girls, sometime in April). They are both so cute with their little tummies, and it was fun to do all the baby talk! We did lots of fun things, as you will see from the many pictures to follow!!!!!


We got to Grammy and Pop's house on Tuesday afternoon and went that evening to Rock City. It is this huge rock formation that they decorate with lights every Christmas. We went 2 years ago when Sophie was only 6 weeks old, so this year she got to really appreciate it! She walked through the whole thing with Grammy!

We met up with Chris, Kim, Alex, Craig and Laura at Rock City. They had never met Elsie before, but all they got to see of her that night were her eyes!! She was very bundled up and warm being carried around by Daddy!

Following Auntie Laura ("Lola") through one of the crevices in the path.

Christmas Eve dinner

Opening stocking presents from Santa on Christmas morning (I don't think Sophie was quite awake yet!)

Sophie is obsessed with books! I think everyone in the family probably read her about 5 books each during the trip.

Elsie and Auntie Kim

The Sophie and Alex band. They have a very interesting sound!

Pop and Elsie reading the paper

Elsie's very first trip after she was born was to Kohls, so we had to take this picture of her in Kohls when we went to buy some clearance wrapping paper!

Sophie and Uncle Chris

The girls got all dressed up for church on Sunday (Grammy was so excited to show off her grandkids!)

We had late birthday celebrations for Mike and Sophie

This is what Sophie's hair looks like after taking out her pigtails!

"Where's our food?"

Chattanooga Aquarium

We got Kim a wheelchair because she obviously gets pretty tired carrying those triplets around!

This cute little old lady was volunteering in the butterfly garden and practically ordered me to take this picture of the butterfly! She was so cute (the old lady, not the butterfly!)

Grammy, Pop and the grandkids

One of Sophie's new birthday presents! Thanks, Aunt Laura and Uncle Craig!

Merry early Christmas!

It was early Christmas in the Rabus household on Tuesday. Thanks for the Elmo legos, Grandma and Grandpa Deters!

We gave Sophie her Christmas present early too...check out her reaction!!!

We are so excited to see our family in Georgia!!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Lunch with Liz

My awesome friend from nursing school, Liz, came back to Oklahoma for a quick visit, so we got to meet her for lunch yesterday!

Liz helped Sophie blow on her sopapilla to cool it down!

After lunch, we went to Lauren's house (Liz's cousin). Liz read some books to Sophie and Lauren's little boy, Ben. (So Liz, does that make him your second cousin? Or your first cousin once removed?) Anyway, isn't he the cutest little boy?!?

It was great seeing you, Liz!!!!!! Thanks for changing diapers and helping Sophie during lunch! You're going to be a great mom some day!

Decorating for Christmas

This is the first year that Sophie has seemed to care about Christmas, and it was so fun to have her help us decorate the tree!

This pretty much sums up what Elsie felt about decorating.

After decorating, we tried to take a few family pictures for Christmas cards. I think this picture is hilarious! Sophie had had enough of smiling for the camera! (But isn't Mike's smile pretty?!?)

Now just a few miscellaneous pictures. One of Sophie's new favorite things is to wash her hands and face at the sink after mealtimes. Look at that pretty (yet messy) smile!

Mike's idea of privacy for a photo taken during bath-time!



The morning after we had tried to take our family pictures, Sophie grabbed Mike's tripod and brought it to him because I guess she wanted to take some more pictures. Here she is posing with her "Baby Bear" in the bumbo.

My famous husband!

Mike is going to kill me for this, but our local news station interviewed him at work this week about a new simulator that his squadron is using to train students on the 737. They posted the video on newsok.com, so click here to see it. You can fast forward through the boring guy in the beginning! Mike is also one of the guys flying the simulator (he's the one on the left)

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we met up with my parents in Virginia at Katie, Reed and Micah's house. I worked the night before Thanksgiving, so we flew out on Thanksgiving day and celebrated on Friday. It was a quick but very fun weekend!

Elsie's first airplane trip and Sophie's first trip getting her own seat. Both of the girls did great!

Our Thanksgiving dinner (on the day after Thanksgiving!)

We ate buffet style in Katie and Reed's family room

The kids are wearing pj's that Grandma and Grandpa got them as early Xmas gifts!

Grandma had her hands full!

(Sorry...don't know why this picture is sideways!)

Lounging on the floor with Uncle Reed

Reed took Mike and my dad to the Redskins vs. Giants game on Sunday. They had official passes to go down on the field (this is a picture of Mike getting as close to Eli Manning as he could) and then they watched the game from a suite. They were very thankful for the suite, since it was cold and rainy that day!

Here's the cutest Redskins cheerleader ever!!

Since we were taking off from the Baltimore airport, we all decided to go to the aquarium in Baltimore on Monday morning before we had to leave for Oklahoma.


I just think this picture is hilarious!! We were trying to get a nice picture of the grandparents with the grandkids, but you can imagine how hard it is to get 3 little kids to all look happy at the same time! Yet, in this picture, we managed to get all 3 kids looking terribly unhappy all at the same time! Sophie had just been crying, Elsie was in the middle of a fit, and Micah was just looks bored!

Sophie gives the whole trip a big thumbs up!!!

Grandma and Grandpa also bought the kids some squeaky shoes. I guess my grandparents got us a pair of these kind of shoes when we were little too, so it must be a grandparent thing!! They are nice in the store because I always know where Sophie is!

Micah must have challenged Sophie to a "jump off" to see who is a better jumper. You decide the winner!