Ho Ho Holy Cow! What a Merry Christmas!! Thank you for the wonderful notes. I already had great presents in store for you guys. I hope you like these too!
Joaquin, I saw a video of you dancing with a balloon in your crotch! Very impressive!*
Diego, I turned on your iPad and saw your latest Minecraft creation. So awesome!
Penny, I flew past your window and saw your lovely candy cane outfit!
I love you all very much and can't wait to visit again next year.
Love, Santa
P.S. Thank you for the carrots for the Reindeer - Rudolf saw Joaquin's video and danced with one in his crotch!!
* We had a very silly dance performance from Joaquin on Christmas Eve. Quite entertaining to say the least :).
Christmas Eve in Maryland was a great one. We spent the first half of the day relaxing at home and playing with the kids. Penny had her first Christmas cookie courtesy of Tita Keese:
[caption id="attachment_5318" align="alignnone" width="560"] I think she enjoyed it.[/caption]
Penny went with us to shop for dinner. She was very helpful:
After 4pm Mass at church we came home to start preparing dinner. Gabe and I were making homemade pizzas. Penny hung out with Nono as they represented the old Hood:
The cousins supervised while we worked on dinner:
Tita Val and Penny helped too:
[caption id="attachment_5313" align="alignnone" width="560"] Hanging in the kitchen.[/caption]
Penny changed into her special Christmas Eve jammies:
And then we all sat down for dinner:
Joaquin took over the photography for a bit:
And took a video of dinner (unbeknownst to us):
The boys left notes for Santa along with donuts and carrots (for the reindeer, of course).
And then it was off to bed. We were excited to see what Santa would leave us in the morning…..
Yesterday we joined Dan and Kelly at The Graces for a great evening of delicious food and delightful company. Their house was decked out for the holidays, so warm and inviting. We had a wonderful time.
Thank you Manda, Denby, Murphy and Rosie for a lovely evening.
We are having a wonderful time and can't believe that we leave tomorrow. :( Posts from the week to come, but here are a couple pics of the happy girl enjoying the family.
Yesterday was a day and a half. Penny has not been feeling well. When we woke her on Friday morning to leave for the airport, we discovered that she had thrown up during the night. She was off all day Friday, not eating much of anything at all, and similar on Saturday too. We were very excited when Sunday she woke up, seemingly feeling better and ate both breakfast and lunch.
We thought she was on her way back, but when she woke up from a late, short nap she was just wrong. Crying non-stop and inconsolable. Not wanting to be put down, but writhing in what we thought was pain when she was being held. We were nervous she was quite sick so we decided to take her to the ER.
In the car she was worse than ever. Screaming and straining against me (we dangerously chose to have me hold her with the seat belt over both of us than put her in her seat). Then collapsing on me as I tried to soothe her. It was just awful.
But…. once we got into the pediatric waiting room, she calmed down, immediately became interested in the new toys she saw and didn't utter a singe cry. Hmmmm.
So she was examined and we found out that she does have a mild ear infection, but we believed not causing enough pain to explain the fits she was having earlier.Also keeping in mind the ear infection she had a few weeks ago, she showed no symptoms at all.
Diagnosis: she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Or, dare we say, she had her first toddler meltdown.
Needless to say we were very pleased that there was nothing seriously wrong, but wow, was that an experience. We left laughing at the kid, which I guess is a good way to leave the ER, and also because I accidentally, and very gently bumped her head on the door frame when I was putting her in the car. :(
[caption id="attachment_5287" align="alignnone" width="480"]"So you'll never believe guys, I tricked Mommy and Dada into taking me to the ER! Ha! They have cool toys in the waiting room."[/caption]
OR…
[caption id="attachment_5293" align="alignnone" width="480"] I tricked my parents into taking me to the ER and all I got was this dumb sticker.[/caption]
I was trying to stay out of Penny's view. She's been clingy probably due to not feeling well but if she doesn't see me she's fine. Kind of like her pacifier, out of sight, out of mind :). But what a treat to have a yard to play in, and that it's warm enough in December to be outside in a sweatshirt.
And can't forget playing the piano with Dada and the boys last night.
A few weeks ago we finally retired Penny's infant car seat, and along with it the snap-and-go base for it that was our stroller. She was getting way to big it so we knew it was time to move up to the big girl car seat.
[caption id="attachment_5226" align="alignnone" width="480"] Big girl[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_5229" align="alignnone" width="480"]"Bye-bye car seat, we had some good times."[/caption]
So of course I had to collect some memories of her in that car seat & stroller. After all she spent A LOT of time in them, and as Gabe says, the stroller base was the best 100 bucks we ever spent.
[caption id="attachment_5234" align="alignnone" width="480"] Coming home from the hospital.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_5236" align="alignnone" width="480"] First trip over the bridge.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_5231" align="alignnone" width="560"] Little peanut at 3 weeks old.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_5250" align="alignnone" width="560"] Passed out after flight to Colorado Springs, 11 months old[/caption]
So now she has a new ride and a new deluxe cushy carseat.
She sits up a bit more in the carseat which I think is a nice change for her. And even more so in the stroller. She definitely gets an unobstructed view of what's going on around us. I do miss looking at my sweet girl when she was facing me in the snap-and-go but this views isn't that bad and I think she prefers it too:
