A Christmas Surprise

We thought that our plans for Sunday had been canceled but we had a late afternoon visitor that took us by surprise...Grandpa B!  Colin had just got up from his "quiet time", which he actually fell asleep during and was so excited to see him.  A nice surprise! Grandpa brought Lil C some cardboard blocks (big ones) for one of his gifts.  Perfect for building towers and forts.  Colin (on his own) decided to make a road for his cars.  He made a BIG road.  It looked so fun that I helped him make it bigger and added some connecting roads and tunnels.  After Grandpa had left the three of us were playing on it until story time. 

Thank you for the lovely visit and gifts Grandpa B! We missed you Patty!



The fort Grandpa & daddy made



C destroying fort w/his basketball



The road Colin made




Batman utilizing the magnificent road



Our B Family Christmas

"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." - Norman Vincent Peale

Our Christmas plans for today fell through at the last minute (you know the East Coast may get some snow!) so we are relaxing at home; Will is playing his new Golden Eye game for the Wii  (addicted), Colin is taking a nap (tuckered after playing with all his new toys - spoiled) and I am playing around with my new point and shoot camera (uh-oh more picture taking capabilities)!  I really think I am going to like it.  I have a few friends who recommended it and Will's Aunt and Uncle had one when they came up for a visit a while back.  I know it will not compare to my SLR but I wanted something that is small and that will take decent enough pictures, so that I can take it on some of my trips that I do not want to carry my big SLR around (like hiking Billy Goat - that stressed me out with my fancy camera).  My new camera can be dropped from a small distance (not going to test it) and is waterproof up to 10 feet! I am so excited!

Anyways, off topic...Our Christmas was fantastic! 



Becoming the master of opening gifts.



We started Christmas morning by heading downstairs to see what Santa left for everyone in our stockings! Colin was very excited to see that Santa ate most of his cookies and that the reindeer ate the carrots. He really enjoyed looking through his stocking and helping mom and dad with ours as well!  Santa, bless his heart, even left our little girl a little Ireland onesie in a stocking! Too sweet!  I love infant clothes! So tiny and adorable. Then we headed upstairs and opened the gifts Santa had left under the tree and ones from each other.  I think it is safe to say we all were thrilled with our gifts! We splurged a little more than normal since we have been so good the last few years and will be the same the next few years. Mommy made a special treat for her boys: waffles with a delicious holiday syrup.  Colin (and Will) love waffles!  Luckily, my Secret Santa at work gave me a waffle maker! LOL. 



Mommy & C: Pre-coffee

 Christmas Day we had plans for Liz and Michael to come to our house for dinner, but that changed at last minute...so we headed down to their house instead.  Will and I packed all of the necessary food ingredients (including my crockpot with the ham) and headed on our way.  All  four of us adults (Colin made attempts) helped me with preparing dinner.  It was nice to have so many helpers.  The B Family menu consisted of ham, potatoes and green beans with a paprika seasoning, corn pudding (of course), asparagus, and a winter salad with fruit (apples, pears and dried cranberries) and a homemade lemon poppy seed dressing (it was delicious).  I know, I know - I am focusing a lot on the food!  As usual I am hungry, even though I just ate leftovers.  Even with a last minute change in venue it was a perfect Christmas!  I am glad it worked out the way it did.  The important thing is spending the holiday with loved ones and we were definitely able to do that.  Of course I would have loved to have seen my side of the family as well, but at least I was able to last Christmas. 

We ended our evening there by enjoying some of Michael's delicious cookies.  Michael loves to bake and is very good at it. Today, Colin was talking about how Michael Michael (he used to say Uncle Michael but recently changed to repeating it) was so good at making cookies.  Colin, as usual, was excited at the chance to play with their dog, Rusty.  He even helped Rusty with opening his gifts that we brought him.
  



C helping Rusty open his gifts.



Colin volunteered himself to be Santa's little helper and passed out every one's gifts.  He was mostly good at not trying to open the gifts before he made it to the correct recipient.  Mostly.  He was so cute.  He would stand facing the tree and say "Think, think, think" and tap his finger to his temple while he was waiting for us to tell him which gift to pass out.

This morning we enjoyed another big breakfast and I just have to say that anyone who does not have a griddle should seriously look into getting one!  I got one for less than $10 on Thanksgiving at Kohl's and just love it! Makes mommy's job in the morning a lot easier...Now I am being called away to play a promised game of Chutes and Ladders with my boys! 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! 

Our family

"The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other." - Burton Hillis

Our Baby Girl: Week 20

"Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body." - Elizabeth Stone

I am writing this a day early, but I am officially 5 months on Christmas Day so I am pretty sure I will not feel like typing then.  Thus far, the pregnancy is going great! No big complaints, besides being tired all the time...but what can you do! Occassionally, I will get the sudden spurt of energy.  I am still under my pre-pregnancy weight but not by much.  Maybe just a pound or two.  My stomach is a little more uncomfortable than I remember it being with Colin...but that is tolerable.  I am wondering what my flights to Italy and Greece will feel like when I am 6 or 7 months pregnant...talk about uncomfortable, but so worth it!  We are still looking at names but I think we got it mostly figured out.  We are going to start on the nursery after the new year.  I do not want to go overboard with buying tons of new decorations, so I planning on doing Winnie-the-Pooh again, but this time a girlier take! I mean it is me, we are talking about so I am not painting the room pink, but it will definitely have a girly flare to it!  As much as I can handle at least! We are also going to paint Colin's room also!  We want him to feel as much a part of the change as possible.  His room is Super Hero themed.  My mom, the sweetheart, is going to make curtains for both rooms.  It is going to be cute!  Super excited!

Here are a few pictures from this last week.  Technically at 19 weeks but it close enough.  I look like I grew a lot in the one in the sweater, but I think it was due to layers because today I look more like the red shirt one.

Our little girl is finally moving more today.  I can feel her a lot as I type this.  Such a sweet thing to feel but something I am not sure if you ever quite get used to!

Preparing for Santa

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!" - Francis P. Church (From the New York Sun, September 21, 1897)

Colin knows that Santa is coming tonight and he is STOKED!  He also knows that there are a few things that needed to happen before Santa's visit.  For instance, we were going to go see the Christmas Tree in DC and hang out with some of his cousins (which is so exciting in itself), and we were going to open some gifts sent from Grammie, Pi-pa and Mi-ma (Oregon).  We also needed to bake Christmas treats for Santa, buy carrots for the reindeer, and watch some Christmas movies (Charlie Brown & The Polar Express).  He has been pretty patiently waiting and enjoying all of the Christmas traditions that have unfolded this year.

On Thursday, Colin and I spent the day together.  My little helper baked sugar cookies, oatmeal chocolate chip and fudge with me!  It was a lot of fun.  Although, he did try to lick EVERYTHING and eventually my cookie area turned into his car track, but it was still a lot of fun.

Colin using the cookier cutters



Colin's cars

Last night we headed to DC with our nephews and Aunt Wen Wen to look at the Christmas Tree at the White House and Capitol.  It was freezing, but beautiful!  Colin loved it!  He always loves hanging out with Aiden and Alexei, but he also loved the trees and all of the trains set up around the biggest tree.  They even had Thomas and Percy trains this year!  Colin freaked!

The Capitol Tree

The Capitol

Colin all bundled up!



The tree by the White House - it is surrounded by trees from each state and territory.


We decided to make Christmas Eve the day we open gifts from my side of the family.  Colin loved everything.  Thank you Grammie, Pi-pa and Mi-ma.  Colin has spent all morning playing with his new toys.  I was able to catch his reaction to some of his gifts on our new Flip!  The Flip is a great thing.  It is perfect size (small) and plugs right into your computer (easy to load) and takes great videos.  Love it!

This has been such a wonderful holiday season!  Colin is at such a fun age. 

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!  I hope that everyone has a wonderful holiday!  Thank you everyone for the Christmas cards, gifts, fb comments, etc.  We love you all and miss you! Wishing everyone a happy and safe conclusion to 2010 and an amazing New Year!

It's a....

GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!

We have known for a few weeks that we were more than likely having a girl.  My doctor was 100% sure but since I was not quite 17 weeks and I know that if they make a mistake it is usually when they say it is a girl, I wanted to wait until our big ultrasound on the 14th to announce.  We ended up having to go back a second time because they did not get a clear picture of the kidneys and the tip of the spine, but today they were able to see both!  Thank you, God!  Also, the technician said it was a GIRL!!!  Fingerscrossed they are right because otherwise planning for it would not be cool.

We are SUPER excited!  We would have been the same with a boy but it will be nice to experience both genders!  Plus, I think Colin will be such a good big brother to a little girl...and Will is going to spoil a little her!

I am also pretty sure a few grandma's are pretty excited for a girl to join the family.  It will be the first granddaughter for both sides!

Meeting Santa

This is the first year that Colin is really starting to understand the idea of Santa.  He is still not quite there but it has been so much fun teaching him about Christmas!  He is so excited for Santa to come to our house.  After Santa heard good things about Colin from his Grandma Liz (thank you) he received a personal video message from Santa himself!  Colin was delighted!  He has watched that video over and over.  It amazes him that Santa knows his name, has a picture of him in his book of good little kids, and even knows what he wants for Christmas (Buzz Lightyear toys).  If you ask him who Santa is his answer is "Christmas", so he is still learning but it has been a blast this year with him understanding a little more about Christmas.  We're even trying to teach him about giving.  He is learning while watching me wrap toys for our nephews.  It was a hard lesson at first because he just had his birthday and all the gifts were for him.  There is progress though!  He also is learning about giving gifts to people we do not know that are less fortunate than us.  He helped me pick out a gift for a little girl from a local military family that our work adopted for Christmas.  This has been such a great Christmas so far!

Colin also met Santa at the mall.  We were not planning on meeting him this visit so we were not dressed for the occassion.  It had snowed so we were all bundled up.  Colin was so excited in the line.  He kept trying to peek over the gate and get Santa's attention by whispering "hi" to him.  THEN, once we got there the lady taking pictures picked him up and set him down next to Santa...well Colin is a little picky about who picks him up so he did not like that and started crying.  Like REALLY crying.  So, his picture is of him crying.  Still cute, but more on the funny side.  After we had lunch he asked if he could go say "hi" to Santa again.  I told him that he cried last time so that may not be the best idea.  He said he cried because the girl put him in Santa's lap instead of mommy.  So sad.  We did not go a second time, but we were try again next year.
Colin's first Santa picture:

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Snow...it is beautiful, I will admit that.  I still prefer to go and visit the snowy area and then leave it behind once I head home.  We got a couple of inches today and boy was Colin excited!  For the most part, I just do not enjoy driving in it.  Or other peoples' driving skills when the roads are white.  Luckily, this area is a lot better than Oregon for clearing the roads...a lot better.   Colin's daycare was closed today, so I stayed with him this morning and then he got to spend a few hours at Will's office while I enjoyed my work's Christmas party.  As usual, delicious food and this pregnant lady ate her share! The snow made it a little difficult getting to the resort, but the food and company was worth it.  Our group did Secret Santa's this year.  The person who had me asked Will for some ideas.  My dear husband suggested a waffle iron...so I guess we will be having those waffles Christmas morning like Will was hoping!!  Actually it was a great idea and was something I wanted.  I just like teasing Will.  After my party, Colin and I spent a long time out in the snow.  He had a blast! 



Mom - Colin loves his Spiderman hat and gloves!





Sitting by the tree



Surrounded by Names

Naming a baby can be a hard task! I think we as parents stress ourselves out over it.  I mean it is going to stick with your child FOREVER!  There are so many to choose from and trying to integrate a side of the family makes it that much harder.  If you are like me you want something not really trendy but cute and interesting. 

Luckily with Colin we knew instantly. Naming him was not a difficult task.  I had a strong feeling it was a boy and really was not interested in looking at girl names.  When we saw Colin in a name book we both got really excited.  That one had no outside influence (it is not a family name) it was just a name we found together. We actually did not really look at anything else after that.  It worked perfectly because we are both of Irish and Scottish descent (the book we were looking at said one "l" was Scottish and two was Irish). His middle name is the same as my husband's and his mother's maiden name.  Will did convince me to have an idea for a girl name, so I loosely had the idea of Lilianne (from my grandma Lillian and my other grandma Anna). 

Since Colin was born, we have tossed around a few names here and there for our second child.  We focused more on girl names because we seem to agree more often on boy names.  We had Evelyn (I like Evie but not a fan of the whole name), Audrey (can you guess why???), Ava, and a few others but none of them really stuck.  I also went through a phase of wanting to do a name from Greek history.  I have always loved Ancient Greek civilization, whether it was mythology, philosophy, art, etc.  You name it...I probably have dabbled at least a little bit in it.  I was thinking of Athena (but it is getting more and more common, plus it is a very common dog name), Leda, Penelope (which Will vetoed right away - what can I say The Odyssey is one of my all-time favorite books), and many others. Even boy names like Hector, Priam, Marcus etc...But then I thought that my hobbies and interest may not be shared by this little one.  Plus, I do not like names where it is so obvious why the child is named that.  That is why I had a hard time with Audrey.  So, no Greek names.

I actually really like Logan, but with Will being a Wolverine fan...not so sure!  If we wanted another Irish name we had thought of Donovan, Dominic, or Declan.

There is one name that I have loved since I came up with it...but we still have a few we are tossing around - so no announcing now.  Plus, we are pretty positive we know what we are having but we are waiting for a second look next week...just to be sure!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

This past weekend we started decorating for Christmas.  I am on travel for a week this month and want to get everything started so I can just enjoy this time with my guys.  We got our tree up and decorated! Colin was so very helpful with telling us EXACTLY where each ornament should go, which was usually on the tippy top where mommy could not reach!  He has been pretty good at not touching the ornaments that are on the tree. Pretty good. We took a risk and put more ornaments towards the bottom of the tree (last year we only put a few non-breakable ones).  Sunday was so nice.  We woke up early, ate a big breakfast while a Christmas Jazz station was playing (later we ventured to the traditional Christmas songs, but I am finding as I get older the more I prefer instrumental music), then started decorating.  I wrapped most of the gifts that we have already and put them under the tree, as I explained to Colin over and over that they were gifts that we are giving to other people.  It is a little confusing since he just had his birthday where he got to open everything that came through our doorway wrapped.  I think this year Will and I are going to be better about combining our Christmas traditions.  So, we have one gift that Colin will open on Christmas Eve (my side) and then we will save all of this other gifts for Christmas morning (Will's), plus he will get his stockings and gifts from Santa (wrapped in different packaging and that will remain hidden until Christmas morning).  I am getting so excited for Christmas!  Colin's age is so perfect for it! This will be our first year leaving cookies for Santa -  Colin is going to love it!




Colin helping organize the ornaments





And playing with all the ones that were considered kid proof



Our Scottish Santa





And our German Santa!

What a wonderful time of year!!!

A Time to Be Thankful

This was our first Thanksgiving in our new home!  Not everyone we would have wanted to share it with was able to come, but it was made extra special by a visit from my dad and his wife, Michele.  We had a wonderful time this past week.  Colin loved to get bad guys with P-pa and even made Mi-ma join in the hero action.  It has been almost a year since I have seen both of them so it meant a lot that they could fly out to see us.  It is hard being away from family, especially around the holidays.

Will had to work most of the week but Colin, P-pa, Mi-ma and I were able to explore the beautiful and exciting D.C. area.  We spent the day at the Mall on Monday.  We went to the American Museum and saw some of the monuments (from afar)!  The American was pretty interesting.  I really enjoyed seeing the First Ladies' evening gowns.  Gorgeous!  I was surprised that they had so many and some of them were very old! 

On Tuesday, we headed to the Air and Space Museum.  Colin loved the big planes and jets!

On Wednesday, we went to Mt. Vernon (what Colin is calling George's house) and explored the 1st President's house. 



Colin had it easy!



We had a relaxing Thanksgiving where all of us, even Colin helped out with the dinner! Michele and I even did some early Black Friday shopping online!  I love stores that did that so I did not have to go out.  People get crazy!



P-pa doing something with the turkey



Some of the final spread with some delicious Mt. Vernon wine - yes, I enjoyed half a glass...everything in moderation!



On Friday, we took Colin down to Grandma's and enjoyed a nice lunch.  Then the four adults went to a Capitals hockey game!  It was awesome!  Will was the only one who had been to a hockey game before.  I loved it!!  Will and I may have a new sport to watch together :) 

This was such a busy week but a lot of fun.  I am so glad some of my family was able to spend a holiday with me and my Virginia family.