Christmas 2010

I hope that everyone out there had a great weekend and a fabulous Christmas. We sure did.

We spent Christmas Eve with the Grover side of Paul's family. Cousin Jane and her husband Greg always host dinner for everyone. It's so nice to see everyone and to see how much all the kids have grown over the year.

We stayed the night at Mom and Dad's house Christmas Eve so that we wouldn't have to drive all the way back the next morning. Mom and Erin made a great breakfast and then we opened presents. We didn't go as overboard as we have in the past but everyone still got lots of good stuff. Will most of all. We tried to space them out a bit so that he would get a chance to play with everything.

Will got a cool doctors set from Erin. It has interchangeable X-Rays, an IV line, and a doctors bag full of equipment. He took the time to sit down and check Paul's heartbeat, his temperature, and his ears.

The next item was a remote control car from Grandma and Grandpa Noble. It was built for little kids, so all it has is 4 buttons; one that makes it go forward, one that makes it back up, one the makes the horn beep, and one that revs the engine. He loved that! He drove it around for hours, menacing the poor dogs. I tried to get some pictures but he was moving around so much that they came out blurry.

The last big thing was an artist easel from Grandma and Grandpa Noble. One side has a chalk board and the other side has a white marker board. There is also a roll of paper through the middle so that he can color with crayons. He loved the marker board because he could draw as much as he wanted and then erase it and start over.

Later in the morning we brought out his finger paints and taped some paper up so that he could paint. He likes this because it's messy.

In the afternoon Nina and Paul's brothers came over for dinner. Mom and Erin made a fabulous turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We were so stuffed that we could barely move.

Once everything got settled again we got William ready for bed in another set of Christmas PJ's. I think he got about 6 different sets this year. The fun part is now he can wear them until Spring!

Paul had to work yesterday so William and I spent the day back at Mom and Dad's. William played with Grandpa while us girls went shopping. (Yes, we are just about that crazy.)

In the evening we went to Nina's for Sunday dinner. She made her traditional Christmas Prime Rib dinner with all the fixin's. After we ate we opened packages with the brothers. Nina gave everyone ZuZu Pets. For those of you who don't know, ZuZu Pets are little electronic hamsters. Each of us got one pet and a piece of their habitat. So, we spent about an hour setting up a huge hamster run in Nina's front room and sending the little guys scurrying through it. By the time that we left last night it looked like toys had taken over the front room!

After all of the excitement of the weekend it is hard to come back to work and focus. Mostly I keep thinking about all of the toys and gifts that are piled up in my living room waiting to find a home somewhere in the house.

Oh well... Hopefully the cats aren't having too much fun playing doctor.

Snowmen and Christmas Trees

We spent time playing at Grandma and Grandpa's over the weekend. Grandpa helped Will make his first snowman in the yard. Will kept putting big handfuls of snow on the front to give him a big belly.

On Saturday we went to the annual Festival of Trees. As usual they had a ton of stuff to look at. Most of it was pretty standard Christmas fair. I have posted some pictures of some of the more unique displays.

This one was called "That 70's Christmas". There was a big sculpture made out of bike tire rims with flowers and lights. The tree itself was covered in peace signs and more flowers.

This one was all done in dinosaurs (my favorite). I couldn't get a wide enough shot to get everything that was laid out around the tree. There was a small army of plastic dinosaurs on the floor around the tree. I would totally have bought this tree, no matter how much it cost, but it was already sold.

This one was called "A Rockin' Christmas". It was all done in old albums.

Besides the trees they always have great gingerbread displays. The biggest one this year was a candy carnival. It was so big that I had a hard time getting a good picture of it.

This was Noah's Ark.

This was a train station.

This one was a cool idea. It was done as a suitcase that had opened up to show a village inside. They even had painted all of these little travel stickers on the outside of the trunk.

On Sunday we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's and Will helped Grandpa organize and put up Christmas lights. Mostly he was in charge of turning them on and off when Grandpa told him to, but it was a help. We had a great weekend overall.

I am starting to feel a bit better everyday. We had another ultrasound on Friday. The baby is doing fine and growing well. We are scheduled for our big ultrasound on January 7th. That's when we will find out what we are having. I will make sure and post it for everyone.