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.

Adele and Grandma

One day Adele turned to look at me in the kitchen and I had this instant thought, "I've seen that look before!" It took me a little while to figure out where and then I realized that it was in a picture of my mom as a toddler. I had wait until my mom could bring up the picture to confirm my suspicion, but I was right; there is a strong resemblance as you can see below. Now I need to find one of me too at that age to see how I fit in!

October

October was an interesting month. We had lots of winter weather including a big snowstorm complete with 3 1/2 feet of snow. Oh yeah, and then there was that other thing.....a new member of our family!

Adele really seems to like Jack. She had a few moments of jealousy right at the beginning, but those quickly gave way to a strong desire to know where Jack is at all times and what he is doing. She also wants to help feed him bottles and show him off to her classmates at daycare.




We had a lot of snow in October, which was great for Adele. She loves eating snow!

Adele just would not or could not go to sleep one afternoon so we finally gave up and brought her back downstairs. I was making dinner and came to check on her around 5:00 only to find her SOUNDLY sleeping on her bean bag chair. Awwww.

Just a cute picture. She has her entire menagerie there with her: pink blankie, monkey, bear, and cookie monster, also known as "Gatches" We don't know why he is known as Gatches; he just is.