Holiday Updates

I want to get our Christmas/New Year's update posted, but I really shouldn't be doing this right now. The whole downstairs is full of boxes, plastic, wires, styrofoam and a half-stripped Christmas tree. We used some of the money we got for Christmas to get a new DVD player/surround sound system. (Guess who's idea that was? Hmm.) Steve decided he was going to set it up the same time I decided to take down Christmas. Steve's mission is finished for now, while mine remains unaccomplished. I think I spent more time keeping Sophie from eating plastic bags and bits of styrofoam than packing up decorations. Now that she's fast asleep, I have a few minutes. I'm not ready to go back downstairs, either.

To keep myself from writing ten pages of holiday play-by-play that no one will read, I'm just going to throw out some pictures that will highlight the last couple of weeks we spent with our families. I will preface this by reminding you that Sophie is still the only grandchild on both sides. She got the most presents by far and is in about 99% of the pictures we took. Lucky girl.

Miss Bright-Eyes woke up at 6 AM Christmas morning and wouldn't go back to sleep. By the time everyone else got up and we gathered to open presents, it was time for her morning nap. Luckily, she got to suck on everything in her stocking before she crashed.


Here we are for round two and dressed in the Christmas jammies Dev and Andrea got her. One of the toys she got was a Tickle-Me Elmo. This wasn't an ordinary one, though. This little guy laughs so hard it makes him fall over, roll around and kick his legs, and stand back up. It's really amazing. Sophie wasn't so sure about him. If he got too close to her while he was in tickle-mode it made her cry. She'll have to grow into that one.


Here we are about to eat Christmas dinner. Also at the table were my brother Devin, his wife Andrea, friend of the family Jeremy, and my grandparents.


Here's the whole crew, including the cat (Abby). We couldn't get Sophie to stop looking at her.


After we left Idaho we stayed the night at my grandparent's house in Sandy before we flew out of Salt Lake the next morning. Sophie got a kick out of playing pat-a-cake with Grandma. We got a kick out of watching her.

A couple of days after we got home, we went to Sacramento to spend New Year's with Steve's family. We had our "Christmas time" with them, visited with family and friends, went go-cart racing, but mostly we Wii'd ourselves to death for two days. I'm not a big fan of video games, but man . . . I wouldn't mind having one of those. I got pretty good most of the sports games which is a real confidence booster for me and my lack of athletic-ness in real life. I'm also kicking myself for not taking any pictures while we were there. And actually, my Dad supplied most of the pictures we have from Idaho. (Yes, Dad, I know you sent me a lot more pictures than the four pictures I posted, but I don't think anyone else wants to see all 110 of them. If they do, I'll gladly send them over.)

Oh, I almost forgot! Speaking of Sophie being the only grandchild. . . she only has about 6 months left of her reign. Steve's sister Jennifer is expecting this summer!