BlackJack sunshine: To: Our Friends and Family "A Christmas/New Years Card Blog"

Along with being a stay-at-home mom, I have my PhD in forgetfulness. Unfortunately I also have a severe allergy to sending things in the mail. Things like Birthday cards, thank you cards, and Christmas cards are purchased, but never sent.

This Christmas, I'm going to try to make up of it.

I was trying to think of a creative way to send a Christmas card to ALL of our friends and family. This is what I came up with. A Christmas Card Blog!!!! =D

To: Family

We have really missed our East Coast family! It's been a crazy year for us. Mark and I welcomed our first child into the world and moved our little family to the state of California. While we absolutely love it here in beautiful Northern California, we constantly feel like an important piece of us is missing. We have really missed having you guys here with us to share in our exciting, frustrating, joyful, and overwhelming journey through parenthood, but I hope that by me sharing our lives on our family blog, it makes everyone feel like they are experiencing these special moments right along with us. We love you and we can't wait to see everyone this Christmas.

To: Friends

California has given us a chance to meet some awesome people and make some rad new friends, they have made this move to California an easier one. For making our first year here feel like the best place to start our family life, thank you!

Becoming a mother has been an awesome journey. It's amazing that something like motherhood can immediately bring perfect strangers together. Since I have become a mom, I have made some amazing new friends and reconnected with some old ones. I have really appreciated having all the support and advice from other mommy friends, even my non-mommy friends have been amazingly supportive...living so far away form our family support system has been hard, but getting that unexpected support from our dear friends has made it a little bit easier to handle.

I have noticed that every single one of my friends has/had something really amazing happen/happening in their lives this year and I want to let them know how absolutely incredibly stoked I am for them. I feel like all of my friends are the most deserving people of this kind of true happiness. I hope that next year is amazing for you all.

And now, since I'm sure no one wants to see pictures of us (pfftt, boring!), here are some pictures of a cute baby in a bow tie. Enjoy!