Christmas Eve visit from Kira, Kim and Brad

I am pleased to say I have a new computer, and I'm very excited to be reunited with my pictures, and with blogging. But I have some catching up to do...

Kira, Kim, and Brad visited on Christmas Eve. Here are the two babies playing together:

And here is Kim getting the usual treatment from Andrew:

Kim, Brad, and Kira on the couch in our living room:

And a darling shot of Kira. What a doll!

It was so nice to see them. We wish they lived closer!

An Inconvenient Truth

(Still no working computer at home, so no photo downloading...)
Meanwhile, in my extra free time I recorded Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth from Pay Per View, and watched it tonight. Have you seen it yet? It is a must see. Absolutely fascinating, completely frightening, but with just enough of a sliver of hope at the end that you don't end up feeling completely depressed. I highly recommend it. Makes me want to quit my job and take up the cause full time. Or at least lower my thermostat a couple of degrees. Watch it and then tell me what you think. There is more about the movie here: www.climatecrisis.net

Computer down... no pictures for weeks!

Just in case you've been checking in to see the same aging post, time after time, I just wanted to let you know that our home computer has been down for weeks now, explaining my long blogging absence. I have tons of pictures from the holidays, and from our amazing New Years ride in the Rose Parade, but I can't download anything until the computer is fixed. Jeff is working on it. For those of you who I know read the blog frequently, I'll send out an email when I'm back up and running again. Meanwhile, Happy New Year!

Bonfante Gardens

It was a chilly night and a long drive, but well worth it! Bonfante Gardens, located in Gilroy, is an amusement park dedicated to toddlers and young children. This time of year they are decked out for Christmas. The kids enjoyed the rides (as did the adults -- thanks to Criag's urging, Dad and I nearly lost our lunches on the banana split.) The babies enjoyed the lights and the spectacle. Here are Andrew and Hannah sharing a ride in the double stroller:


Andrea and me in our winter warm fuzzies:

Julia on the Goldfish ride:

And Nathan sharing some guy cousin time with Andrew in the stroller:

Another cute one from the pajama party!

Leisurely morning

Snuggling in the big bed in our PJs one Saturday morning

Holiday decorating

Our newly converted-to-gas fireplace is done just in time for the holidays! Here is a picture of Andrew enjoying the new cozy fireplace.

It's hard to see it here, but we did more than ever to decorate the outside of our house. In addition to the lights on the roofline, we also wound little white lights around the two trees flanking our driveway. This picture hardly does it justice... it looks spectacular in person! Jeff did a great job.

I haven't got a good picture of the decorated Christmas tree yet, but you can see the bottom third of it in this picture of Andrew.

 

Look at our great helper!

Julia was a huge help in our holiday preparations this weekend. She particularly loved the sweeping, which is one of her favorite activities. In the bottom picture she is helping Daddy install the new gas logs in our fire place.

 

Christmas tree selection day

When I was a kid we'd head up the mountain to hunt for the perfect tree, chop it down, strap it to the roof of the car, and then enjoy a cup of homemade hot chocolate from mom's thermos. Our christmas tree outing this weekend had echoes of this tradition, but with a decidedly modern twist... We picked up our tree at the corner lot. We put it in the trunk of our minivan. We headed to Starbucks for hot chocolate. It may lack some of the romance, but it got the job done.

Here's the tree in the back of the expedition:


The tree looks tiny in the picture above, but actually it was so big it almost didn't fit into our stand:

Here is Julia enjoying her hot chocolate at Starbucks:

And here is Jeff doing surgery on the tree to get it to fit into the stand:

 

Julia's First Haircut

We took Julia to Golden Shears Barber Shop in Menlo Park. This is George, whom we liked very much. He had a fun phone toy for Julia to play with which helped to keep her distracted. (GG, were your ears burning? we "called" you to tell you all about the haircut from this phone.)

The distraction technique was hardly needed, however, given what a perfect lady Julia was throughout the whole thing. Which is really amazing given that she's never had her hair cut before. She handled the experience like a pro.

She even got her hair styled with the blow dryer, and came away with a fabulous 'do. George gave us a certificate commemorating the event, and we collected a few clippings for the baby book. All in all, a very successful outing.