Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of you! Here are a few highlights from our Christmas season.

CLICK FOR MORE CUTE

Photobomb

I think it's pretty obvious that I'm generally the one behind the camera. This leads to me begging Ray to "get a decent picture of me."

Unfortunately for Ray, this is harder than it may sound (my brothers can just skip to the comment box now, but remember: I edit the comments. :) ) Consider that I hand him the high-end camera that I rarely let him play with and expect him to get decent shots. Then, consider the other obstacles:

One obstacle:

The photobomb of cuteness. (Even the camera is distracted by this one.)

Wood Park

Those of you from LJ will remember the big wood park that was near our house.

Sadly, it has suffered the fate of many a wooden playground.

It is now plastic. Smaller. Less original.

However, E and Ray still had fun.

First Visit

We made it to see my parents last weekend (sorry, the Minnesota trip is coming, but a lot more difficult this time around - see: two kids, me going back to work sooner, etc. - but it is coming).

Anyway, it was great to get T to see one set of grandparents.




He's very excited about it, as you can see.

Steamboat 2012

We finally made it to Steamboat last month for one of the last open days on Howelson Hill. It was sunny, nearing 50 degrees, and pretty darn comfy when the wind wasn't blowing. Nice corn. A perfect day for this.



Yeah, I'm going to get all picture indulgent on this one, so click for more...

Tracking

So.. that track back there is a good metaphor (and was Jimmy and Ray's way of amusing themselves while not getting to watch the Daytona 500), but it is also a sickness.

It began at my parent's house over Christmas.

My mother was very tolerant about having her living room look like this for two days...
Of course mine has looked this way for the better part of the last month.

It does keep people entertained, though!

Can you see the fascination?

I can. :)

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!

Family

As I mentioned, much of the Baumgartner clan got together for Steve and Missy's anniversary (Mike, you were missed!). Getting my family together is always good camera fodder, even beyond my nephew's photobombing skills. Speaking of, Ray has some of his own:

The rest of the family cleans up pretty well...



Some are better behaved than others. No comment on my own.

It was nice to see (almost) everyone in one place! Steve and Missy, I'm working on a book and a CD. Soon.

Many Celebrations

My brother and sister-in-law had a special celebration at the church to celebrate their 20th anniversary. I'll skip the details here, as I feel like those are theirs, but I know several people are waiting for me to get pictures together. So.. guys. I got the pictures edited. Here are a few glimpses of the ceremony.





Congratulations on 20 years and best wishes for many, many more!

Dear (Oh Dear)...

Dear Mom (and Dad, but it was totally Mom's idea)-
Thank you for the food processor. It makes it really really fun to shred zucchini.
Perhaps too much fun. You just put the zucchini in the top and WHOOP it's gone. I had to do it a second time. Four cups of shredded zucchini.

On that note, thanks for teaching me to always have lots of staples in my pantry.

And thanks to both my mother and my mother-in-law for supplying us with lots of bakeware.
(This loses something in scale...that would be two loaves of zucchini bread (well, one and nine-tenths loaves) PLUS an 9x13 pan. I needed one loaf for the block party this weekend so, yeah, too much fun.)

And mom: thanks for the cinnamon chips. I probably should stop making bread for today, but... soon.

I'm going to go eat some zucchini bread now. And look for some other reason to shred vegetables.

Love,
Laura

PS- The recipe is a 1996 Cooking Light recipe that I can't find online but will email at request. It's yummy and makes two loaves (if you don't have a zucchini-shredding fetish and double the recipe), one of which can be frozen. If you don't eat the first one before they cool.

Choo-choo

My mother knows the way to E's heart.

Well Done

A bit of a change in topic today, but I've been keeping an eye on my nephew's wrestling successes all season (mainly via his sister's facebook feed). He's done pretty darn well, and finished second in his division after the last tournament. I'm pretty impressed! He made the paper (third from the left on top).

Go Steven!

La Junta Xmas 2010

So. This is late. And a little self-indulgent, or at least family-indulgent. But there were so many funny highlights in the album, well, it's my blog, and if you don't have five minutes to spare... spread it out over the week or something.

Watch for cue ball obsession, **evil wooden puzzles**, baby nine ball (and the baby nine ball commissioner), cheetah pants, fetch, and diner dairy product catapults.

(You might want to give it time to load or play it without watching - weird pixellated transitions mean it hasn't fully loaded.)

Thanksgiving...

I'm way behind here, but E and I got to spend Thanksgiving with the Baumgartner clan.

Obsession

I have to apologize because I JUST downloaded the pictures off of one of our cameras and realized that I hadn't done so since before we visited my parents last month. Turns out ya'll have been missing out on some gloriousness. At least in my opinion.

I haven't mentioned this much, I don't think, but Eamon is obsessed with OUT. His first act after breakfast is to go find his shoes and bring them to you, muttering "shoo?" He will drag you out as many times a day as he can, even in ridiculous heat and humidity (as Alli and Jana discovered last week). Visiting my parents' house, with the nice enclosed yard, was like heaven for him. And then he discovered something even better.

Baumgartner Christmas 09

Despite Ray's schedule, we did get to do one family Christmas- and, fortunately, even overlapped with my brother Steve's family. With this many pilots around, that's decent.

I'll warn you now, there are a lot of photos- most of them hiding behind this link.

Thanksgiving 2009

Eamon had a lot of fun at my parents' for Thanksgiving. He found out about stairs in the safest way possible - in a house with, well, one stair. (Ray continues to find our insistence on using the terms "upstairs" and "downstairs" very odd.)
He got to watch little balls spin around, always a favorite pasttime.
And maybe he was giving Ray tips...
Of course, there was food. So very much food, and so very good.