Weekly Update AND Christmas Part II

Hello everyone!

I told you that there would be more about Christmas and here it is!

Brad, L and I spent the morning visiting with Brad's Aunt and Uncle and then headed over to my Aunt's house for Christmas dinner. My Aunt Gloria has two very large bulldogs, Hero and Sadie. They are very easy going gentle dogs, but they are as big as L is. We walked in the door and Sadie and L found each other face to face. L was trying hard to back up, but I was in the way and finally Sadie decided to go bother her mom for some scooby snacks and L decided to enter the house.

I find L's relationships with animals so funny. She acted like she was so afraid of Sadie, but later in the day we decided to go outside and air ourselves out and we found Hero.



Being the big daddy, Hero is larger than Sadie (and looks a little bull-doggier), but L could not get enough of him. She would go right up to the fence and try to touch him and talk to him. I just find it so funny that a chain link fence gives L all the confidence she needs.







L did spend more time outside running after K. I was so pleased with how well they played together. I mean, I guess if you count K running and L running after him playing together, but they were both giggling and laughing the whole time. Everytime we'd go somewhere and K was there L would just light up and grin at him. I love cousins!



After playing outside, we had a very wonderful Christmas dinner and a little time for talking and playing.

Brad and cousin R2.



Cousin R2 and L.



My family is very large. There are five kids in my family and five in both my dad and mom's families, so you can imagine that family get-togethers are large things. For many years now we've abandoned exchanging gifts with my dad's family and have opted for a cut-throat ornament exchange instead. We're all very competitive people and it suits us well.

The way it works is that everyone purchases an ornament and wraps it. The ornament goes under the tree, we draw numbers and then we go in number order. When it's your turn you can either open a gift or steal someone else's gift. When your gift gets stolen, you can either open a gift or steal someone else's. After you have had possession of a particular ornament 3 times, then it's yours. After the last present is opened, you keep what you've got. It's a lot of fun and incites a lot of laughter and mock irritation. Most of the ornaments we have came from the family ornament exchange.

There's also a lot of time to sit and talk, take photos, text :o), etc, while people are making their choices and stealing ornaments.

Cousin Eddie using his new phone.



Mary and Mawmaw open the first gift (I think).



Brad and L watching the action.







L and cousin H are the closest in age to one another. Here they are playing with L's new pig.





Cousin R2 had light up Christmas socks. L discovered them while she was standing by the table and decided that she was really interested in those socks. It was very cute!



Mawmaw and cousin R1 opening an ornament.





Cousin R1 really liking the ornament she opened!



It was a great Christmas. L went home and crashed hard from all of the excitement.

Friday was spent visiting friends and family. L got to go to the Pearce house where she got to meet another dog, Max through the glass. Max is a yellow lab (I think) and he is way bigger than L, but through the glass doors she thought he was pretty fantastic. She went to Grandma Bee's house and got to see Uncle Bob and Aunt Donna again. It was a very busy day that turned into an early night in. Poor L was completely wiped out from the week's festivities. Brad and I packed and on Saturday we drove the 22 hours to our home.

Now... we're just glad to be back home. We are still tired from the trip and from all of the fun. Brad worked only a half day today, but tomorrow it's going to be back to reality! In some ways, I'm not sure that I'm ready and in other ways I am so very ready for it to be here.

I hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas and continues to have a wonderful holiday season. I'll be back next Monday!

Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone!

Even though it hasn't been THAT long since I updated, a lot has happened, so I'm afraid this is going to be a long one!

Last Saturday all three of us were invited to go to a fancy Christmas party at our friend's Norm and Thermaliz's house. We had a really great time and ate some really really really great food and felt all fancy dressed up. We had to wake L up from her nap to go and she was a little shy and cranky at first but she warmed right up. It seems like nowadays I never know what to expect from her when we go out. Sometimes she's got terrible seperation anxiety and nerves about strangers and other times she's more than happy to talk to anybody around. L always fits in with the other kids, so that's right where she headed to play.







L loves a pretty dress even if it's on someone else!



We were sad that we had to leave so fast, but Brad was playing in the annual Christmas concert and we had to rush over to be there. Way back when I was playing in the band too we liked the Christmas concert because it was something a little different, but at the same time it was sort of lame because it's not like playing a really challenging concert that takes lots of preparation. It's mostly the same music or at least the same types of music year after year. As with many things, that has changed since we've had L. We look forward to the concert and the sing-a-long. We like the family atmosphere and all the kids running around. It's just funny how that stuff changes!

Part of the fun is that the band gets santa to come before the concert (he also makes several appearances during the concert as well). L had her photo taken with santa last year...



This year she was less willing to be photographed with santa. We weren't going to force her and it was nice that at this particular concert it's completely free to have your photo taken with santa. It was just so hilarious to have santa get in on the fun of having L scream her head off just getting near him. Here's this year's photo...



It's totally awesome!

Afterwards she was traumatized enough that she wouldn't smile for me to take a photo of her and Brad, but I like this one anyhow.



Saturday night we went home and slept hard. We'd had a couple of crazy days between playdates and parties and getting ready to travel. Sunday we woke up and packed our bags and got in the car for the long trip to Mawmaw/Pawpaw/Grandma's houses.

One of my favorite things to watch is how L responds so much differently to her cousins now than in the past. I think that part of this is due to our weekly playgroups and just being around other kids her age, but part of it is just growing up. She loves playing with cousin K. He's three and a half, and just big enough for her to tag around.

Her favorite game to play with K is chase, or really just run. K runs back and forth and L runs around after him. The point isn't really to catch him, but just to run back and forth and giggle and giggle.







They also just plain play together. L is still too little to be a cooperative playmate, but she's happy to watch K play.



L and K both absolutely love that my mom has nearly the entire collection of singing items from hallmark. Mawmaw gets them because she knows that the grandkids love them and they certainly give her plenty of joy in return. I know that this is part of the joy of grandparenthood. My parents can spoil L absolutely rotten letting her turn on every singing snowman at once and enjoy her reaction rather than fret about how she's going to just want to do it over and over. I love watching my parents be grandparents to my daughter and I think that it even helps me to put things in a little perspective. She is such an amazing joy to be around even when she's being a stinker. That goes for cousin K too, although not being his mom it's harder for me to be frustrated when he's naughty. Mostly his naughty is just cute to me. :o)

One of the cutest things about the snowmen is the dancing. K showed us how to dance with his hands on his hips.





He even found a good audience in L.



She thinks his dancing is pretty fantastic.



But don't worry, she's got some moves of her own...







What L really likes is to push the buttons on the "top" dancers.



and of course K likes to push the buttons too...



Uncle Brad and K even posed as reindeer. They apparently have very different ideas about what reindeer are supposed to look like.



Christmas Eve was actually fairly quiet around the house. L got to have a good nap, and the only real plans we had were to go to the children's service at our church. The kids were dressed up and too cute not to take a few photos of them.





After the service I could not wait any longer. We brought one of L's gifts in so that she could have it a little early. It's a zebra that bounces and I think the photo speaks for itself.



This morning we woke up a little late, which I am enjoying because I know that all too soon we'll be waking up early on Christmas. Last year, of course, L was only 4 months old and too little for much excitement beyond staring at the gifts and maybe giving me a smile or two in photos. She didn't seem to notice anything different (although I guess the stocking was really all that had changed in the room overnight since we'd put the bouncing zebra out the night before) and she headed straight for that zebra climbed on and started bouncing with all her might.



She is still too little to grasp that there are MORE gifts so I tried to encourage her to look in her stocking and when she found that there were toys in there, she became more interested.



She seemed to very much enjoy the "binky" book that she received although as soon as she picked it up she was back on her zebra and reading it from there.







She started to get the hang of it, but I she was really overwhelmed. We'd convince her to open a new package and she really just wanted to play with whatever she'd opened in the package before. She managed to tear everything open and have tons of fun. We also all managed to open too many packages of wonderful things and ended up feeling very blessed.









(brad got an OSU gnome which L also thought would be great to play with)









After having all that fun, we got dressed and headed over to Grandma's house to start all over again.

It was much the same. We all got way more than we needed, and we were all very happy. L got so many wonderful new toys that I don't know how we're going to get them all home. I'm sure we'll manage, but we're already talking about shifting toys from upstairs to downstairs and installing some new shelving to help out!



























More about later on Christmas day soon. For now I must go to bed, toddler days don't start later just because mommies got to bed late!