Thursday: Fun Day!

Grandpa looks in the back of the truck while Lauren, Aunt Sissy & Jordann huddle around David. Grandpa drove us up to cash in some Christmas money/gift cards!






Missing authentic Tex-Mex food in CA, Aunt Sissy, Lauren & Jordann enjoyed this stop at Taco Cabana! Dad & Grandma are down there by David.






At Lincoln Square:Mom & David pose on a hippo. David & dad cross the parking lot looking at airplanes.











David has fun riding in the car!









Thursday night we celebrated Uncle Phil's birthday with more Mexican food! Left to right: Mitch, Aunt Jana, Papa, Grana, MawMaw, Aunt Erin, Uncle Phil, Dad & David.


Aunt Jana loves to love on David!!! And David loves right back! (Most of the time!) : )

Christmas at Grandpa's

Wednesday was another fun day at Grandpa's house! We had our traditional chicken & dressing Christmas dinner for lunch and had some fun outside. We opened Christmas presents in the evening when Uncle Bubba got in from work.

Aunt Wee took David & Mom for a ride in the golf cart. Then David walked with Mom & Aunt Wee all the way to the bottom & back up the hill.


Black Dog is recovering pretty well from his amputation surgery. Grandpa says, "He acts like he's had three legs all his life!" Grandma replied, "Well, he has!"

Grandpa takes Black Dog for exercise several times a day, but leaves him tied up much of the time so he won't run off & get hurt. This former stray dog is now quite expensive!






David thought Grandpa's "uni-goat" was pretty funny! (Nanny's other horn just fell off a few months back!)






David gets along great with his cousins! Here he is playing with Andy.

My, what big hair you have, Andy!






Here is David with the whole pile of cousins on this side of the family before we opened Christmas presents: Andy, Will, Jesse, Lauren, Jordann & David. Aren't they cute?







David & Lauren enjoy each other. We're all glad to see them visiting from California. We miss them!

Feeling the Love!

Monday evening Dad called home from work to say that he'd gotten PM vacation & would be home in 30 minutes! David sat down with some milk & a Baby Faith DVD while Mom then scrambled to finish getting everything ready for our trip. Then we hit the road! Yeah! Finally headed "home" for the holidays! We arrived at Grandma & Grandpa's house about 2:15 a.m. - all 3 of us pooped!

Tuesday morning... let the lovin' begin! Aunt Wee couldn't wait to get her hands on her Smushy to give him smushies all over. (don't ask me!) : ) Andy was glad to see us too.

Since this is David's blog... I will keep this mainly to photos of David...

By mid-afternoon, we were at MawMaw's house for our first round of Christmas. Grana & Papa came to watch David open presents. David seems to have warmed up pretty well to Papa!




MawMaw got David some huge board books about race cars & trucks. Here they are reading together, surrounded by MawMaw's toy collection.






David also loves Uncle Phil, who always treats him so sweetly!

David loves things that turn & spin! The last picture is Aunt Jana's boyfriend (Mitch) showing David how to work the big metal top.

The Day After Christmas

This was the day after Christmas... resting up for our big trip to see family! You can kind of see David's Christmas bruise.

We are amazed at the number of hits that David's blog is getting. Leave a comment & let us know who you are!

David's Second Christmas

Around 7:30 a.m., Dad was home for about 10 minutes between the fire station & the hospital, so Mom gave David his stocking at that time. Santa brought a jingle bell shaker, some ABC magnets and some jumbo crayons. David soaked 'em in! Then Dad headed off & Mom made blueberry muffins for breakfast.



David ate 2 muffins (minis) and a bowl of Chex. He's still on a Chex kick after the party mix! Then we spread out paper on the kitchen floor to test out the crayons. David got a few scribbles on paper, but had the most fun just playing with the crayons!

Mom fixed pizza and salad for lunch & we packed it and us into the car to go visit Dad at the hospital.


Here are Mom & David in Dad's office. The big map is to mark coordinates for the helicopter. We never got to see the helicopter take off or land while we were visiting, but Dad said they went out once after we left.




Back at home, David played, never took a nap, and Mom got the house clean. You can see in this picture David's new Christmas bruise from hitting his head on the floor while visiting Dad.





Finally, Dad came home & we opened presents! David loves cats as much as Mom & thought this new cat rack was cool! (and so did Mom!!!)

David got a steering wheel! (It also plays ABC's.)

David gave Dad a cross for the wall.

And Tort got some tissue paper.

David also got some clothes, but you can see how exciting they were... he wouldn't even pull them out of the bag!

A White Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve started out sunny,
but apparently David decided we should have
a White Christmas this year!
Mom thought David was quietly playing
while she hung up clothes...

Well, he was quietly playing! And having a BALL!
After getting cleaned up, Mom told David the story about Baby Jesus & David played with his nativity scene.
Here he is trying to figure out the light (the star).
Look TWO Angels!
Then we went to the fire stations to deliver our cookies. Dad was sent to Station 5 today, so we didn't get to have Christmas Eve with our Central family either. Station 5 was decorated for Christmas, though, so we got some good pictures.
After lunch & nap, David & Mom enjoyed another warm day in the back yard.
We also loved on Fluff.
Later, it seems that a tornado has struck the little town of Bethlehem!After baking 12 dozen cookies earlier this week, Dad requested gingerbread! So Mom made some gingerbread this afternoon & we went back to the fire station, where David got to "drive" a fire truck!
When it was time to go, David didn't want to get out of the fire truck!
A ginger molasses cookie made it better.

Back at home, it was time to take a bath (I won't go into the gross details of that!) and get ready for bed.

I must admit I'd never thought of how 24-hour shifts would affect Christmas. We've kept busy today, but it is sad to be spending our first Christmas completely away from family. We miss all of you!!!

I'll post about our Christmas tomorrow night, but it will probably be later since Dad won't get off work at the other job until 8pm.

...I hope everyone appreciates the people who work holidays so that we can be safe.

Two Days 'Till Santa Comes!

While David napped this afternoon, Dad & Tort played!

David's feet are up against the back of the couch with his head about to hang off and his bottom sticking up in the air!


When the mail came, David got his very own Christmas card from his MawMaw. It had Rudolph on it. She is sad because she won't get to see us (especially David) on Christmas Day.

Now picture this (because I didn't have my camera): Today, we are two days before Christmas & we ate lunch on the patio at Rosa's Tortilla Factory sitting in the sun in our short sleeves (David had long sleeves), before making a few last minute errands. And I don't know where all these people came from, because they're not normally here! Town was PACKED! Alan wanted to run to Wal-Mart to price something un-Christmas related & I told him he was nuts!

Later David enjoyed playing in the yard with Fluff and a piece of weather stripping he found!

Grandpa - If you go to Wal-Mart tomorrow, have fun & take pictures! : )

Sleepy But Returning To Normal

PSEUDOEPHEDRINE: May cause drowsiness. Ya' think?! (That is the kitchen floor in case you don't recognize it.) This morning nap lasted until almost 1pm! And it seems to work on cats by osmosis! Or maybe this is a sympathy nap?

This afternoon, Mom and David made the cookie run. We walked around the block twice, enjoying the beautiful weather. The farthest cookies we delivered were actually 1 1/2 blocks away at a house where we'd seen another young mom with a little girl in a stroller. She was home & happily received our delivery. At another house, we were greeted by an 8 yr old boy, who looked surprised when he opened the door, but when saw the goodies took them & closed the door. Wonder if he'll share with his family? Some weren't home - it was mid-afternoon. The house directly across, I know were home, but didn't answer the door. A few minutes later, I saw they'd been retrieved off the porch.


David is slowly becoming himself again. His smile is starting to return for brief moments... Like today when he was helping take care of the Chex that was left over from the baking last night. He pulled out the paper towels again, but the stack of dishtowels are from Mom's night of baking.