happy birthday morgan

ava asked if we could post a photo to the website today. she wanted to wish a happy birthday to one of the coolest girls in the whole wide world - her cousin morgan!

"happee birfday moorgin" love, ava.

winter

hope everyone is staying warm this winter. just wanted to post a fun photo of me and my little girl...

GFA Christmas Party

We had a fun GFA Christmas party at a church in Carrollton. We enjoyed a dinner together and got to watch some funny skits. I got to be in one skit where we acted out what it might be like if we started a new GFA office in the North Pole. My greatest achievement was getting Kris Kringle to switch from reindeir to flying water buffalos. :)

me, teressa and ava

me playing "terry" in the skit

our friends - the mcdaniel family

stephanie, amy and chrissy

the buscemi family - they are from pennsylvania, like me

my beautiful wife teressa

ava in her cute christmas dress

teressa, ava and our friend erika

chris and cindy

the schwartz family

Rizzo Family Christmas Party

We had a fun Christmas party at our house in December and lot of friends came over. We had the chocolate fountain (from our wedding) flowing with chocolatey goodness and people brought dozens of things to dip into it. We also had a white elephant gift exchange and watched Elf together. It was a pretty hilarious time and Ava was glad, because she got to stay up til 11pm! :)

rachael showing off her cider

eric is a big fan of the chocolate fountain...

jd and casey checking out a video clip on matt's ipod

can that huge gift really be for the white elephant gift exchange? yes. and if your still wondering what was inside... it was a huge teal floor pillow. i still havn't found a place for it. :)

ava loves showers!

Church Relations Christmas Party

Tony's department got together for a Christmas party a couple of weeks ago. And even though he wasn't able to get a photo of Troy, because of his incredible camera dodging skills, trust me- he was there. :)

this is taryn. he recently fell off of his roof when putting on Christmas lights. but the Lord helped him to somehow land on his feet and not even break a bone!

this is my snowman costume. took me a long time to put it together. ;-)

ava had lots of fun with her aunt sandy

our little Christmas elf.

we had a children's Christmas party at gfa last week. ava had her first chance to devour a present. It took a few seconds, but once she recognized it, she had it in her mouth. yep- box, wrapping and bow... take no prisoners. :)

we had our family Christmas this morning. i'll have to put up photos soon. it was a blessing to spend time together. we'll be travelling to florida for Christmas, so we wanted to have some time together and do some of the traditions we enjoy. we had the fireplace roaring most of last night and this morning. ava got to open a couple more presents. she even helped me turn lots of pages in the Bible as we read the story of Jesus coming to earth.

we took a walk to subway and kroger for lunch today. wow. cold. in the thirties, but it was nice to get out.

ava can sit up well on her own now. sometimes she'll sit up for about 10 minutes or so. she has some pretty funny falls though and loves making sounds to let us know that she has fallen. she has learned how to make spitting sounds pretty well and enjoys squeeling.

i (her dad) sure enjoy holding her. i'll be pretty sad when shes too big for me to carry around with one hand. we got her some beatrix potter books for Christmas, because we really enjoy reading to her. now we just need to get her a cd player of some sort, because she loves dancing when she hears music. really! she starts moving, singing and even the occasional swaying.

well, i better head to bed. i hope you all had a great weekend.

yummy

matt and simon opening their gift