Christmas Morning

Christmas Time!

Every year, the college sponsors a Children's Christmas Breakfast for the kids of staff and faculty.

Family Photos

We (usually) update our family photo every Christmas, and I thought I'd put them all together in a progression.

2005

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Fourth of July

The Fourth was apparently all about food and sparklers!

Isaac, bragging that he'd gotten a cracker all by himself.

Nathan, on the right, is Abbey's oldest boy cousin, and Brooke is his girlfriend.  Abbey attached herself to Brooke very early in the day, and they were both very patient with her.  

Isaac's first sparkler!

I went shopping for sparklers the morning of July 4 (probably not the best time to go fireworks shopping), and the only kind they had were these, sort of a more energetic sparkler.  

They were a big hit, though: even the big kids got in on the fun when they saw these!

Christmas Photos

With Santa (much better than last year, when Ethan was terrified of Santa Claus)

Pictures with Santa

They turned out better than I expected. I actually like the second one better, as it's candid and not posed.

Christmas Family Photo

The updated family picture is here!

I suppose this will probably become our tradition: we talked all year about getting a family photo professionally done, before the busy holiday time, but that still hasn't happened. Today we went to the children's breakfast at the college, and I asked a friend to take our picture before we got in line to see Santa. I hoped to get a good picture before anyone got cranky, and besides I wasn't too optimistic that either Ethan or Abbey would sit with Santa, even if we were there. And I was right: Ethan freaked out just being close to Santa, even on my lap. So the Santa picture, when it comes, will not be flattering to poor Ethan.

But we did get a good family picture. Note that no one is crying in this picture, unlike the 2009 photo.

Fall colors on the way to the "new playground"

We went for a long walk this afternoon, checking out the fall colors.



Our destination: the playground at Mauck School (the "new playground" as Abigail calls it, because Bailey School is much closer and therefore we don't visit Mauck very often).


The first time we visited, she was scared to try this monkey ladder, but this time she went up it six or seven times.


Ethan slept through most of this playground trip, but he woke up towards the end.


The twisty slide! I don't recommend it for adults: too much static electricity on those plastic slides.

Fourth-Generation Family

We just got home from Irene Anderson's 90th birthday party. She is Debbie's grandmother, Abbey's great-grandmother, and Abbey's namesake too (her full name is Abigail Irene). While we were there, we managed to get a couple of fourth-generation pictures: