A long time coming...

Yes I need to practice this whole picture uploading, don't know where to start typing, confusion thing... but I have sadly been neglecting our poor blog!! No posts for couple of months... I am sorry to say I am ashamed of myself, I apologize. But on the up and up I have some lovely pictures for you guys... everyone say YAY!!! :D

Above is us at Chris' graduation from bootcamp... I just love Gabriel's expression: Who is this guy?! :D But we are so proud of Chris and the hard work he did!
You have to love the mossy trees!! Aren't they cool?
My loving parents came to visit us a month ago and we had a blast!! I'm so grateful I have such wonderful parents, they are truly amazing. This was outside of the building for tours to Fort Sumter. Gabriel just loved that fountain!
Above us we have the South Carolina beaches... they are fun but they can get oh so crowded! And below us we have Chris and Gabriel at Easter time. Chris is looking spiffy in his Navy uniform :D So funny story about this egg hunt. There were about 5 kagillion kids and parents and only like 2 eggs (okay yes I am exaggerating) But seriously it's not to far off! They had different sections for the different ages and 1-3 year olds had their parents help. So here is the conversation I hear from one of the mothers after the egg hunt is done.

Mother: Wow, that went fast! I don't think a lot of people got eggs this year.
Father: (glances in the basket his wife is holding) Oh yeah?
Mother: Yeah... they really need to put more eggs out there, I think some kids only got one... it's kind of sad.
Son: Mommy didn't we get eggs?
Mother: Sshhh!!!
Eliza:(silently glances over to the other woman's basket to reveal she had 20 eggs all to herself... yes my friends, she was the elusive EGG-HOG-A-MOMMA!!!)
This is our little weed patch outside that floods everytime it rains, which makes for a wonderful pond... if only we had some fish!
Gabriel looking cute :D

We have to keep ourselves entertained during the hurricane season... yes folks that's right HURRICANE SEASON! Luckily, me and Gabriel both love that South Carolina rain so I guess it works out okay :D

Will keep posting... hopefully more often :D
With love- Eliza

So I guess the last one was a bust...

I had an amazing amount of people that didn't believe that Gabriel looked
more like me than he did Chris... so I decided to re-do it. Okay okay you guys were right! :D

And a Happy Valentine's Day to you!

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!!!

Today, Gabriel and I had so much fun going out to Red Robin and the Sweet Tooth Fairy with some of my best friends. It was great fun and the sweets from the Sweet Tooth Fairy were absolutely amazing! We just love the way they decorated their store as well, it is just too adorable.

This was my Valentine's present to myself :D I'm trying to finish my quilt and when I saw this fabric I absolutely fell in love with it! So cute!
Me and my cousins, Emily and Jessica, had a little Valentin's Par-tay a couple weeks back... We watched a fun movie, and did some cute decorations for Valentine's. Yeah, we're pretty silly :D Spirit fingers!

This is my Christmas tree but I haven't taken it down yet so we decorated it! The chain is actually a countdown chain until Chris is home (12 more days!! :D) and then there's some roses at the top.
These are some cute boxes we made. I just love stackable boxes!! Each of us girls took one to decorate and keep for ourselves. It actually only took some scrapbooking paper, ribbon and some rhinestones... they came out so cute!

I'm trying to break into cupcake making ... this is just a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. I really like trying to experiment with some designs with chocolate, so this one has some simple hearts that I just did with melted chocolate chips. I really want to do a lemon cake with a lemon curd filling so if you know some good recipes (for ANY cake, filling or frosting) let me know!!

Love- Eliza

In the Navy!

So in case everyone hasn't heard (my family, sadly, has had to hear me rant for a couple weeks now... I'm sorry for being a basketcase all!), Chris joined the Navy a few months ago and has just been waiting for his time to go to bootcamp. Gabriel and I were so lucky to have several months with him before he went, but time just flew! The time finally came and Chris left for boot camp on the 5th of January. We miss him, but know he is going to do awesome!

In a few weeks we'll have one of these in the family! Hopefully it will be my husband instead of a random stranger...

Ain't this the truth!! Well I guess this really wouldn't apply because women are allowed in the Navy now... but I still think it's cute!



I get to get my sailor kiss!!! I've only loved this picture forever! I think I'll opt for a different outfit though... I don't think I could work the nurse look!

I'm back... with pictures!

North Carolina Pictures
hey everybody!!!!! I'm finally getting onto our blog again after a long summer and a fun fall. When I saw the snow was falling I knew it was time for one of my quarterly blog entries... but seriously I am trying to better about getting pictures on. So this is our north carolina trip! We went there for Chris' family reunion and had so much fun! I even kept a jar of humidity for a souvenir :) So above is the house we stayed at. It was gorgeous and right on the beach!

We went to this amazing aquarium while we were there. Gabriel watch out for the alligator!!!! ( No, it's not a real one, but this picture still scares me every time I see it)

All the boys looking at the turtles and fish. That's Chris' nephew Aidan and his brother Aaron. We spent the whole time trying to find the turtle and we finally realized he had buried his whole body in the gravel. If you look on the bottom, the turtle's head looks like a rock or a log.

Gabriel loved these turtles because once Chris put him up to the glass they swam right up to him... it was so fun!

This was the view from the house. It was so gorgeous and just a short walk to the beach. I couldn't believe that it could be that green so close to the beach!

Family picture next to the marsh... marshes are the new fall leaves... kind of.

These are some more at the aquarium. That frog statue was made out of sand that had been pressurized together, and then an artist scuplts the sand. How many frogs can you see? Whoever gets it right gets a candybar!!

Gabriel riding a frog.

He loved playing with the pool balls at the beach house.

So that was our North Carolina trip!!! We had so much fun and it was good to see everybody, but I must say my hair really liked getting back to a drier climate :) I'll get some pictures up of camp and halloween for everybody soon!

Hall Look-alike Meter

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Oh the Joys of our first family outing!!

This week we finally went on our first family outing... since Gabriel was only 2 months old at the time, there was only a limited amount of places that we could actually go. So the Hall's first family outing was to ... The Bean Museum!! :D Filled with exotic animals from mystic places and a magical Liger!!! We absolutely loved it!!! Gabriel couldn't really understand where he was or what he was doing, but he was absolutely terrified of anything with large teeth or fangs after Chris put him in hippopotamus mouth... no children were harmed in the taking of this picture.

Then we went on a helicopter ride the museum offers... look a train!!! Okay so the were just miniature villages, but we can definitely IMAGINE that we went on a helicopter ride.

AHHHH!!! Bet you wouldn't think stuffed animals could be so ferocious and alive!! Chris actually took this picture and I didn't know about it. When we were on our way back to the car, I was flipping through the photos and came upon this one... I actually screamed, and Chris just laughed :D
Gabriel at this point had decided he had a very long day... and I just didn't know what to do for a pose. I think I'm guarding him from the massive buffalo... yeah.
Anyways, that was are trip!!! Hopefully we'll be going on more exciting ones soon but for now this one was perfect!