Past to Present

We haven't really updated in two months. We've been hosting, remodeling, vacationing, and working pretty steadily. And we've had some camera trouble (one was stolen, the other broken), so we're without a real camera right now, but we do have some pictures to toss your way.  We'll let you know when we set up an account for people who wish to support the "Preserve Memories of the Beautiful Marshall Children Fund." But enough excuses--onward.

Okay, rewind to Thanksgiving. We hit up the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Silver Spring, with our friends the Wilcox's.

We headed down to Georgia for Thanksgiving itself. The Galli's met us there, and we had a wonderful, relaxing vacation--just how Thanksgiving should be.

Amazing playground.

This picture rocks. For so many reasons.

Isn't Hannah's work amazing!?

Alright, now onto Christmas. 
First: Christmas Trees.

At the lighting of the National Christmas Tree. Taken by a crummy cell phone at night.

The Capitol's Christmas Tree.

The National Zoo's Christmas Tree with the Evans fam (the nice man cut our boys out of the pic when he took it!)

We had a number of visitors over the last few months, but none surpassed in length or love by Julia! Ben still looks longingly at the door for his "Lala." Here we are down the street at the DC Temple's Festival of Lights.

Now for some Miscellaneous. Our poor Abe got as sick as he's ever been in December.  It put him out for a couple of weeks and he lost some weight he didn't have to lose. But through it all, he still maintained his noble, optimistic self. Always assuring us he'd be okay and smiling through his suffering. He's an amazing young boy, and this experience increased his faith in God and the priesthood.

 

Christmas was great! We had a lovely church meeting and then had a terrific time with the boys. We went up to see Rachel and Micah, who were  visiting Micah's family near Baltimore. 

The concierge at Andrew's work building insisted on giving us a gift card and getting something for the boys without them knowing where it came from. They were thrilled to find a surprise present under the tree.

Our Hodge-Podge Gingerbread House.

More on that mini-kitchen to come...

We sure  miss that little Aaron!

And he sure misses Andrew's firebeard!

We went to the Evans', where a highlight was watching these manly men take a wintery dip into Lake Thoreau.

Here's this manly man jumping right back out of the freezing water.

We also got to go to Zoo Lights with them on Boxing Day, which was a blast!

Finally, we went to an unbelievable Bobby McFerrin concert (worth checking out at this link--skip to the middle for McFerrin) at the Kennedy Center on MLK Day!

Oh, and the President and First Lady were there.

Sorry for the blurry phone pics--we actually weren't far away at all. Pretty awesome. A free family concert, with one of the greatest vocalists of our time, attended by the President and First Lady. Only in DC.

And now, a couple of B-Jam pics as a happy goodbye for this post! Have a great week! Make it as happy as Benjamin is sure to!