Holidays 2009

We have had a wonderful Holiday season. Before we left home for the farm, we opened many of our family presents in celebrating the Solstice one day early. Chiara got a camelbak water pack. Asher opened many good presents but here is playing with a set of Chiara's magnetic letters.

Over the week before the holidays the kids made ornaments for various relatives:

Chiara's big present this year was a dollhouse and she's received many of the components like rooms or people for the house from everyone. She loves it.








One of the guests to Christmas at the farm brought a big floor piano for all the kids to be left at the farm. Both Chiara and Ash really enjoyed it. Here Chiara and Phoebe are playing it.


Asher and Chiara had good snuggles with Granddaddy and each other:


... and me:


The big hit of our holidays (besides the dollhouse) has been Wii Fit Plus. Here Jason is trying to play a game:

And here he and Chiara are playing with the dollhouse:

Chiara Pictures

Last week Chiara saw Asher's hat sitting on the floor so she put it on. Looks pretty cute, doesn't she? It was hard to get any pictures because as soon as she saw I had the camera, she tried to grab it or squinched up her face to smile crazy big.



Chiara loves drawing and painting. Here she was painting an ornament with Mama.

Happy Hanukkah

Friday night was the first night of Hanukkah. We went out to dinner with LD & Joey and then gave the kids their new (used) train table. Since I went and picked up the table on Sunday night, it has been in LD & Joey's garage so they brought it with them. Then Rachel and Joey went directly home from the restaurant while LD, Asher, Chiara, & I went to "see some lights."



You can see that the table has been a big hit.



I think Joey took this while holding the camera in his hand and extending his arm. Very nice.

Happy Hanukkah and if you haven't seen it, here's Neil Diamond singing The Hanukkah song.

Holiday Decorating

Sunday we went and bought a small potted tree to use as our Christmas tree this year. We've done this in the past and it's always nice to get to use the tree for the rest of the year. We had to rearrange some furniture and electrical cords but the tree is set up on a small table at the edge of the living/dining room. The bookcase standing right next to it holds the menorah. The kids were quite eager to help hang ornaments.



And the finished product. The white lights on the tree are new led lights. The red lights on the tree and the lights around the window are "low-energy" but not led lights. We put up lights on the other windows in the living room as well but did not take a picture.