Christmas and Birthdays

Looks like it's been about six weeks since I last posted anything here. What's been going on? Too many adventures and not enough time to post them all, perhaps.

Well, there was Christmas. Grandma Sharon visited for about week over the holiday, and this time she didn't have to leave early to run home and salvage her house.

We went to the local tree farm (the place where we got our pumpkins at Halloween) and cut ourselves an extra-wide Douglas-fir. I'd hoped we could go there by bicycle, but I guess it was too cold and snowy. We don't have the right sort of bicycle trailer for hauling forest products, either.

Christmas was nice this year, although perhaps a little lonely since we didn't make the trip back to Kansas. I think we'll probably make the trip home for Christmas in 2008.

We got lots of great gifts (thanks, everyone) and the kids have had a great time putting them together, painting them, playing with them, arguing over them, plugging them in, turning them on, getting them wet, shooting them, rolling them, flying them, brushing them, eating them, and scattering them all over the house.





Of course, in the days immediately following Christmas both kids have birthdays. This year Quinn had some his friends over for a party. It was a wild time that included play time in the basement with all sorts of new toys, and a wild romp in the backyard. I pulled all the boys around the yard on the eight-foot-long toboggan we got from one of our neighbors. It was really fun. We have some video, taken on our new video recorder, but it's rather long for posting here, and I don't have the necessary software to edit it. So here's a picture of the boys, and Abbey, at the party.



This year Abbey had a party at Art Unlimited, where she and her friends painted ceramic things. I think they had fun, and their things came out really nice.



And then there was the birthday dinner at Cancun, the best (only) traditional Mexican restaurant in Okemos. We go to Cancun as often as possible, which isn't really very often, but the food is really good. This time the kids got the full birthday treatment, including sombreros. Oh, and don't worry, they didn't come anywhere close to finishing those giant whipped cream covered ice cream dishes in front of them.