Happy Holidays!

For most of you out there, that's really Merry Christmas!  Regardless, happy holidays to you and yours. We wish you warmth and love this holiday season and a happy, wonderful new year!


(And yes, as usual, this is all the holiday card I can manage. We've really enjoyed getting all of yours and I hope you don't hold it against us!)

Ice Prince

Ray found a new companion to share his love of ice skating.





E loved it. Literally the only time he whined was when the melt on his coat FROZE to the ice when he fell and he got stuck.

He got pretty independent, too.



I think he's better than me already.

Patience

All of my brother's family love E and are great with them. However, my niece has a near-infinite reserve of patience and wonder that makes her particularly good entertainment (and me over-inclined to abuse her as a babysitter).

Consider the game of leaf races.



Endless. But pretty from a distance, no?

LJ Thanksgiving 2011

Many Thanksgiving traditions were observed this year.
For example: the cheesy dinnertime photo.

See also: lacking at least one pilot.
[Edited to add: STEVE! I just noticed. Bad Steve. (but funny)]
And then: Baby Nine Ball.

It got a little more cut throat this year.


And a lot less random. I had to put an end to TELLING the baby which balls to move.

Good thing one of the family was willing to let E work out the tension!

Holiday Shine

Santa came early. He got you all an 8 MP phone camera. :)

Dancing? Symphony

Excuse the slowness, as usual, and now I'm going to give you two video posts in one week, but you NEED to see the other side of this. Ray got to stay home for more of November, which means he got to hang out with the Santa moose. He did finally find a way to make Eamon stop playing it.

Dance along.

E HATES it when we sing along to the radio. So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that this infuriated him as well. Apparently, Ray got him to the point where he wouldn't play the moose just so Ray wouldn't dance. (It's sort of mean, but if you'd heard this moose twenty times in a row...)

Anyway. I'm pretty sure you won't be infuriated so much as amused:

May that lighten your Christmas spirit.

Symphonic.. Something

Cheryl took her revenge on the next generation a little early this year. She left off her gift to E, a saxophone-playing moose, at Thanksgiving. 

Saturday we went and got our tree (At an indoor tree lot. With champagne and cider. Fabulous!) and we got it up while E was sleeping and pulled out most of the decorations. E and I did the ornaments Sunday morning (he even kept them mostly evenly distributed! You can see in the background below.) and then E noticed something on a bookshelf.

A chipmunk.

He almost lost his mind. As soon as Ray got batteries in it (oops) E set up a symphony. 

He isn't doing it in this video (chipmunk losing battery power fast, send AAA batteries stat, paws not wiggling), but he still does the dance with the chipmunk trying to imitate the little paw movements. Much more coordinated this year, still hilarious.

Happy Thanksgiving 2011!

I'm sure there will be pictures of familial chaos to share in a bit, but for now:

Thanks to everyone who pulled together for a very last-minute Orphan's Dinner- even though the only person who will be flying solo (literally!) on Thanksgiving is Ray.
In case you can't find him in the last shot:

Yes, E joined us, and deigned to eat some roll.

However, he'd love to help you cook!
(He does make a nice low-chocolate turnover.)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL! We're so happy to have you all and we hope you have much to be thankful for this year!

The Adventures of....

...SUPERBABY!

Big Dog, Little Dog

This is long, but, I think worth it, at least for those who have been sending E books. He is in no way reading words, but he's getting pretty good at memorizing and using pictures as clues!

If you don't remember the story, you can find a few pages here.

Behind the Scenes

More outtakes, this time the scenes behind this post.

I've already documented that it can be difficult to get the Grunzinger men to look at my camera (and yes, Steve was justified). However, I did find one way to get them all to look the same way.
Everybody look up!

Look right!

Look down!

Now look at ME!

See how handsome they can be? Of course, E was quickly done with listening and starting taking charge. Somehow he ended up taking Ray's breakfast order and making him breakfast out of rocks. Excuse the pantslessness.

Blue Sled!

Not only did it get sunny again last weekend, but things have gotten better on the sled front since last year.


A lot better.


Oh, so much better.

More glimpses

A few outtakes here at the blog...first, because it's sunny as I type this, I'd like to share the other pictures behind this one:

SNOWBALL!




There is no way to look ladylike while snowangeling.
Manly, yes.
We did get the required snowangels out front for our first snow. And then it snowed again. And now it it is melting, yay...

Cha-cha-changes

The observant among you might have noticed something at the end of the Rock Creek Farm post.

I'll give you a second to go back and look.

There are lots of pictures in that post, so scroll waaaaay down.....


.....

....

Here's a hint: what our house looked like when we moved in.

And another: this is what our block looked like a few years ago (google streetview).

And... what our house looks like as of a couple weeks ago, at least in hard-to-photograph lighting. The pics in the Rock Creek Farm post. are much more true-to-color.

It's so awesome. E can easily pick out our house now. We all love it!

Halloween 2011

We had time for a fashion show this year...
Sulky, not sure about this...
Then I let him have some of our candy while we waited for the neighborhood horde to be ready.

C'mon, guys, hurry up, candy awaits!
One hour of door knocking and one "Yes, you can have one sucker" later....
ROAR

Note: I obviously liked Ray's mom's Eamonator  costume, because while she had bigger things to work on the last couple of months, I found something similar. Even more amusing, because the two year old across the street was ALSO a dinosaur... and when he came out they just started roaring at each other. Awesome.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!