Merry Christmas 2010!

I truly hope you and your family had a fantastic holiday. My weekend was incredibly special. We had a good mix of relaxing and running around. A good mix of silence and chaos. And a whole lot of love and togetherness. It was perfect.

Since most people have already gotten theirs, I wanted to post our 2010 Christmas card here for you all to see, as well as our letter. I had a lot of fun designing this year's card. It was actually Jason's idea to make it look like a book of stamps, and I love how it turned out! On the back is a 'key' explaining the photos on the front.

Front:
Back:

[Click on the images to see them larger.]

And our letter:

Hello Family & Friends!
What a fun year for us! 2010 was filled with fun trips and milestones for our family. It was our first full year in Minnesota and we can honestly say that we love it here! (Even though we recently got 17” of snow!!!)
Just a few highlights from 2010:
- In June Jason ran his first half marathon here in Minneapolis! After a bunch more smaller races and more training he ran a second half marathon in December in Las Vegas and improved his time by 25 minutes! WOO! So so proud of him!
- In July we bought a house! Jason refers to the experience as the “3 week adventure” since it took us 3 weeks to decide that we wanted to buy a house, close, and move into our new place. It’s fun to be homeowners and we really love living in the neighborhood we live in. There’s lots of space if anyone wants to visit!
- Speaking of visitors, we have had a lot of them! Both our parents visited early this year in February and March, and Erin visited twice! We’ve also had friends visit (my BFF visited from Boston!) and love showing people around!
- In October Jason became an Uncle and I became an Aunt for the first time! Jason’s sister Amanda gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Abigail on October 2^nd. We are so so so excited to have a niece!
- In November we started volunteering for a local foster dog organization on the weekends. It didn’t take long for us to fall in love with one of the dogs! We adopted Everett and our time at home is now filled with snuggling with the cutest dog ever (hehe.) He is a wonderful addition to our family and we are really glad he found us. :)
- Trips this year included Disney World, Chicago, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. It’s a lot of fun to be able to see new places together and we can’t wait for more adventures next year!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Samantha & Jason

Lots more fun to come in 2011 so stay tuned!!! :) I also have a set of posts to help sum up all that was 2010. It was such a good year.