Where Do I Start?

It's my own fault, I guess. Not enough blogging...so many events, pictures and visits. There's a lot to catch up on. The best place to start is at the beginning...of the "Dec 09" photo folder.

First up is Curious George. Diamond D, Aunt Dawn, Mom and Pop got to go see a performance of Curious George. It was pretty good.

The reason the Desmond is giving Dawn the stink-eye in this photo may be because she is claiming the Curious George soccer ball as her own. Bad idea. You may notice that there are lots of empty seats. The showing that we went to was not heavily attended. I can't explain this, except that it was close to Christmas, and maybe everyone was starting to get tapped-out money-wise. That didn't stop us from buying D the largest sack of cotton candy that we could find.

He and his mother put a decent dent in the cotton candy, but we did save some for Emma who was with her Nana.

She got the balance of the cotton candy and the balloon.

It has essentially become family tradition to visit the Santa at the "pizza house", as the kids call it. Long-time readers will likely remember reports of us going to our favorite buffet pizza dive for three years now to see Santa. No lines, simple parking, pizza and an opportunity for the kids to scope Santa out from the safety of our table before heading to his lap...all reasons that make this event a winner for us.

Jen has to accompany Emma. She really wanted no part of Santa's lap otherwise. Evidentially this same Santa visited Desmond and Emma's daycare earlier that month. He remembered Emma from this visit because then too she wanted nothing to do with him. That's OK.

While Emma wanted no part of Santa, his candy, however is another story. She fell asleep on the way home from the pizza house still clutching her candy cane (left hand).

D and E helped their mother build a gingerbread house.

It nearly ended in catastrophe because Jen can defend gumdrops from sugar-crazed children for so long...they all had to be separated so she could finish the task.

'Round Christmas time we took the kids ice skating. It was much more effort holding up the kiddos than either Mom or Dad had expected. It was work to be sure.

In fact it was Christmas eve that we went ice skating , and afterwards we had lunch at a diner in our neighborhood where our waitress was dressed as Santa.

And then there was Christmas. As I look at all of the photos from this day I realize that it's going to have to be a post unto itself...give me a couple days.