Christmas Part I

We had two Christmas celebrations last year. My sister did not have her boys for Christmas weekend, so we decided to have a Christmas gathering a week early. It turned into a slumber party, which was fun for all.

Here's the line-up of cousins

We had a big gift opening frenzy that overwhelmed Adele. She really didn't know how to react. Her cousins were trying to get her interested in opening her presents, but she just wanted everyone else's gifts!

As mentioned, it turned into a slumber party, so here they are the next day enjoying their new gifts. The top photo just makes me laugh. Sophie is sitting on the bean bag chair COMPLETELY oblivious to the fact that Adele is playing with her new doll. As they say, ignorance is bliss!

The Photo Shoot

Even though Jack had never actually worn anything other than sleepers, we decided to get both him and Adele dressed up in their Christmas outfits for a Christmas card photo shoot. At the last second, I grabbed the lint roller to clean up their outfits. Who would have guessed that such an innocent act would completely change the course of the whole thing. Adele grabbed the lint roller and refused to give it up. We pleaded, demanded, begged (well maybe even groveled), joked, and did everything we could think of to get it short of taking it away. The clock was ticking on how long Jack would be alert and awake at only 2.5 months and we couldn't risk a giant tantrum for our pictures.

Just look at that look of defiance. She just seems to say, come on, I dare you to take it.




Here she is getting the bear ready for the photo shoot. We hadn't planned to have a bear in our photo shoot, but what the heck....he looked pretty Christmas-y.

In the end, she kept the lint roller the entire time and we got a couple of nice pictures for our Christmas card. We used these two. Notice how you can't see Adele's hand? Now you know why!



Some other photos including a couple that were in our newsletter.

Charlie Brown meets LL Bean

Our Christmas tree search was a bit different than the one described in my earlier post for my brother and his family. Ours had all the elements of an LL Bean catalog spread: the log home, the beautiful snowy forest, the cute kids in cute outerwear......but then there was the tree itself, which fell more into the "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree" category. But, as Jack started getting fussy, and Adele sat down to start eating snow and then wanted to be carried, the tree looked pretty good, not to mention that it was one that needed to be thinned anyway. The best part is that Adele could not be more delighted with it, so it's all good.

The White House Christmas Tree

Well, okay, maybe the tree wasn't for the White House, but it was an important tree nonetheless; it's for Christmas at my brother's house. They are hosting about 40 people for dinner on Christmas Eve and wanted a really nice tree for the event, so we offered one from our property. We found a beautiful tree that wasn't all windblown and lopsided and manged to load it into my dad's truck for the journey down the mountain. I hear it almost fell on their grand piano when they brought it in the house and set it up, but that seems like a small price to pay for the perfect tree!

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving was at my sister's house this year and everything was delicious! Even though she is only an hour away, it took me the better part of the morning to pack up everything for two small kids to be able to spend a few hours away from home. The car was packed. I don't know what we would do if we were actually leaving for a weekend.

Here is grandma showing Sophie how to hold Jack. She did great and eventually even fed him a bottle.
Jack with Auntie Diana

The kids table

Cleaning up. Adele is helping.

Adele wanted to get on the treadmill, which I deemed to be unsafe until Beau assured me that you had to have a key to start it and the key was located away from the actual treadmill. He then started walking on it to make it go and Adele had to run too. She was screaming in delight at this. We all got a good laugh...... and Beau got a good workout!
It took me the rest of the weekend to unpack from Thanksgiving. Pitiful!

A snowy visit in November

Jeff's sister, Suzanne, and our niece Abby came out for a visit over a long, snowy weekend. Abby was the best cousin you could ever ask for and played with Adele the whole weekend. Adele kept asking for Abby every day for two weeks. It sure was a lot of fun




The girls are eating snow in this picture.


Adele commandeered Abby's video game.


We had some of my family over for a dinner gathering on Saturday night. The roads were horrible and they ended up shutting the highway down so Steve and Kathryn had to take some back roads to get here. We tried to talk everybody into staying the night but without success. It took them 3.5 hours to get back home to Denver. It normally takes an hour.


Abby and Jack. The look on Jack's face is priceless!

Come back soon and visit us again. That was really fun!

Adele's Birthday. Wow, she's 2!

Adele turned two in November. I don't know how that is possible, but it is! We had a low key get together with just us and Grandpa and Grandma. Adele's reaction to us singing happy birthday to her was almost indescribable. She was simply overcome with emotion. I think it was somewhere between pure excitement and a little embarrassment for all the attention. You can see how excited she is the second time we sang to her, but it was nothing like the first time.





Adele got a cute baby doll and stroller for her birthday along with the inflatable "Jump-o-lene" You can see her taking her baby doll for a walk below.