The Barton Family Blog

New Years Eve... My little doll. Can't believe she's almost 2! So sad how it flies by! (I used a feature on my camera that will pull one color and leave the rest of the pix B&W. The first pix is pulling a specific shade of purple, while the 2nd pix is pulling all shades of purple. It's a fun effect!) Me & my sweet on New Years Eve (my dad and brother-in-law build these benches for our new concert scene "The Garage". We are starting up on the 17th of this month and will have concerts every-other weekend) Happy New Year! P.S. Natalee can count to 7 now! It's so cute (:

What a blessed Christmas this was! We started out at home opening stockings on Christmas Eve morning... Natalee got a recorder... Daddy can't wait for her to play it all day long! Johnny was so excited for all his stocking stuffers! Natalee had received a few gifts from Granny Brock so she opened them... (thanks Granny & Gramps!) After Christmas Eve service at church, we headed to Dallas and exchanged gifts with Johnny's family Natalee enjoyed ripping paper off the gifts... she really is starting to "get" Christmas! She's a big fan of books books books of course, and several fun toys as well! Mommy always loves the cute clothes that help keep our baby clothing budget down for the following year! This year was probably my favorite year of gift giving because so many of my gifts were homemade & heartfelt! I love that part of Christmas! (PICTURES TO COME! CAN YOU BELIEVE I DIDN'T TAKE ANY!?!?) For all your scrappers out there, I got a CriCut!! I'm so ...

of our Christmas tree. Kinda a sad little tree... we didn't get a tree this year due to the snow... we were out of town a bunch so that Daddy could work... so we just never got one. After our Christmas play at church, I brought the sad little $6.00 tree home. I kept saying it was a step down from a Charlie Brown Christmas tree... (: Natalee didn't care one bit! I absolutely love the awe of the season through the eyes of my baby girl. What a precious gift!

Here's a funny flashback video! Gotta love my little sugar-plum!

Let it SNOW Let it SNOW Let it SNOW!!

I know this is long. Ya'll don't have to read it all... I just want to remember it all... so this is mostly for me! Saturday we slept in till 9!!! It was amazing! can't remember the last time that happened! We vegged in the morning and watched Wall-e and ate a yummy hot breakfast provided by the hotel. it was relaxing to just have a slow morning, so we didn't check out till 1pm. We headed downtown, browsed @ Pioneer Place... and enjoyed all the holiday festivities going on there. There was a wonderful quartet that sang as well as decorations, pictures w/ Santa, and even snow machines (we didn't get to see it snow inside but we've been there before when it did.... so fun!) We ate lunch at the Spaghetti Factory... and did a little more shopping. What a wonderful 4th anniversary! We missed our little angel... but had a blast! We headed home before the big winter storm hit... but stopped in Dallas on our way home... and woke up to a WINTER WONDERLAND Sunday morning...

(In retrospect I wish I would have taken pictures of each part of the day.... just to have a picture journal of all the funny little things... Words will have to suffice.) The weekend began at 3 am. Friday morning. We woke Natalee and loaded up the car. Johnny was asked to drive our evangelist to the airport that morning since Johnny works in Portland anyway. I had already planned on coming with Johnny that morning so we could make the most of our day. Natalee was a chatter box the entire drive to Portland. I don't know why she didn't just go to sleep... I think it was the novelty of having me in the back seat next to her. She kept saying "hi" to Bob Hall.... it was funny (: Anyway, we arrived in Portland and dropped Bob Hall off... around 5am. We had 2 hours to kill before Johnny headed to work. We grabbed Starbucks and Natalee finally fell asleep. So we parked and napped a little till 7. Then Johnny headed off to work. I met my parents up in Portland. They wer...