Dress up clothes

Elsie got a lot of dress up clothes for Christmas and it has taken her a little bit to get interested in using them. But they are definitely becoming a fun thing to play around with. I found her all dressed up in her cape (on backwards of course) and a hat I got at The Children's Place Outlet for a dollar, I love that place.

A visit from Aunt Charity and Greg

We are always excited to see people that don't come around that often. So we were happy to have Charity come out for new years. She brought Greg which was super fun too. They got a little skiing in while there was still some snow left...we have not had new snow for quite some time now.

Visits from friends

Because of the holidays we had several friends from our Boston days who where coming out to visit family. So we managed to steal them away for a minute to see us too. I only took pictures of one such encounter but to the rest of you know that we loved seeing you too!!!

Christmas 2009

Well Christmas came and went but I have to blog about it a little bit. We had a great Christmas season here with Will's family. I made a big dinner Christmas Eve with ham, potatoes, veggies, sweet potatoes and rolls. All of Will's siblings came over and his mom and grandfather too. We had a fun time eating and chatting. After Grandpa went home and Elsie was in bed we sat down to play some games. We ended up stying up until 2 am and all crashing in various places in our house after the game was finally done. We came up with the idea just that day that Will's mom and siblings should sleep over and have Christmas morning with us. So that is what we did.

Elsie woke us up far too early in the morning and we all dragged ourselves out of bed. It was fun to have everyone there. We began with using our nativity set to act out the birth of Christ. We then moved right onto the presents. Elsie got to hand out the presents after I told who to give them to. When she got to open one herself she liked it. The only problem was she was not that surprised since I had bought all her presents for her with her in the cart with me...maybe next year we will go on a few solo shopping trips. Her favorite present was the stickers that her Grammy got for her. She looked at them and excitedly exclaimed "STICKERS". Will, Elsie and I also had stockings but we broke tradition by accident and opened them after all the presents. After the presents where opened we made a big pancake breakfast for everyone.

Later we went to Will's moms for a little bit to see her there and to eat some more food. We ended our day at Will's dad's house with more presents and a big turkey dinner. We spent the night there with Will's siblings and had fun playing games and hanging out for the next day or so.

Christmas Eve after dinner.



Christmas morning

I made this cape and apron for Elsie and so far she seems to like the cape better.


Will wrapped some of our presents in fabric and used ribbon to tie them up. He used something like a 100 yards of ribbon on this one.





At Will's dad's house.

Swimming at the rec center

Since Will and Elsie like to swim so much we decided to go to the local rec center to go swimming. The most fun thing about this pool is all the play things and the big slide. It also has a lazy river and a zero entry area too. Elsie loves to go down the big slide with mom or dad holding her up at the end so she will not go under the water. We have been back a few times and each time it has been a lot of fun...I consider it a wholesome recreational activity.