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.