Fun With Cousins!

Thank You, Gigi & Papa!

My parents sent Finn some early little goodies for the tree. Being obsessed with all things Christmas, Cars and Toy Story, his reaction wasn’t hard to predict.

Thanks, Papa & Gigi!

One Busy Little Body

Part of the reason we haven’t been as good at keeping this blog up to date with pictures and such is because our child refuses to sit still long enough to actually snap any.  We’ve finally been able to get him to sit fairly still and say “cheese,” but you have about three seconds to grab the picture before he’s headed your way, demanding to “see!! wanna seeeeee!” the image you just took.

I’ve sort of given up on the camera situation.  But we have clipped a few videos lately that are blog-worthy.  They also encapsulate two of Finn’s current happiness trifecta – roughhousing and throwing balls [the third being anything having to do with motor vehicles].

Here is roughhousing:

aaaaaaaaand throwing balls:

and here’s one combining his newfound skill of singing his “ABC’s” with his first love of roughhousing with Daddy. [yes, he skips a few letters at the end, but let’s face it – multi-tasking is NOT in a two-year old’s wheelhouse.

Happy Easter!

We’ve been a wee bit busy lately, and have been EXTREMELY remiss in not only POSTING any pictures or videos, but also of even TAKING any pictures or video. 

Easter seemed like a great excuse to end this awful silent streak.

We didn’t spend a lot of time building up the concept of the Easter Bunny with Finn, so when today rolled around, he’d heard of this creature, but wasn’t really invested in all he/she had to offer.

We “hid” his Easter basket on the floor at the end of our bed thinking he’d see it when he came in to announce his awakening as he does every weekend morning.

He walked by it three times, and STILL didn’t notice it.  Apparently we have a very focused child.

When we finally did show him his basket of goodies – including a large set of Cars cars, some Toy Story goodies and a couple of books – he decided the Easter Bunny was one cool cat.

He set about getting acquainted with his new friends while I started getting things ready for dinner.

After his nap, we gave him his gift from Gigi & Papa.  Complete happiness ensued.

An hour or so later, Nana and Papa arrived and we kicked off a fairly short Easter Egg hunt in the backyard.  It’s fun to see the differences and similarities from his hunt last year.

After the hunt we took a couple of pretty cute photos.  It’s really getting frightening how big our little guy is getting.

BW and his mini-me.

All-in, it was a really great day.  We shared dinner with Nana, Papa, cousin Cody and Cindy’s friend Shawn and his girlfriend Suzanne.  It was Shawn’s birthday, so Finn’s day was made 100% awesome by the finale of cake, ice-cream and a rendition of “Happy Birthday.”  He went to bed one happy little boy.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Our Finn has become quite the copycat – then every once in awhile he takes the reins and wants YOU to follow HIM.  This is a video of a little game he & his dad have been playing for awhile now.  As usual, it’s hard to tell who is having more fun.

Finn the Snow Bunny

Finn starred in his first recital last Friday.  Thankfully, I returned after an eight day road trip just in time to see our little star.

It’s pretty disorganized… But keep in mind these teachers had to teach a roomful of 18 mo – 2 year olds to do something in a coordinated fashion.  In other words, they were attempting the impossible.

the “stage”

part two… I can hardly believe my son didn’t get out of his second year of life without dancing with a girl!  He’s quite the gentleman, though.

We couldn’t have been prouder.  He even spotted us about halfway through, but went right back out there & kept up with the routine.  That behavior earned a cookie for the ride home!

The Walker Holiday Season

I’ve been a little remiss in keeping this site up to date, but it’s not for lack of content!  As you’ll see from the pictures & anecdotes below, we Walkers have been busy little Holiday bees, traveling to hither and yon to spread our Thanks & Merriment.  OK, ok – maybe that is laying is on a little thick… but check it out – we really HAVE been all over the place!

It all started with Thanksgiving.  We finally braved a plane trip with Finn, fresh off his nearly yearlong hiatus from the friendly skies.  Now that he can be entertained for more than five minutes at a time, in particular by movies like Cars and Toy Story, we felt confident that he’d do a little better than the screaming, squirming scenario that had caused his grounding last Christmas.

God Bless You, Disney & Pixar.

So we packed ourselves up and headed to Colorado to visit Brian’s sister and her family for a week around Thanksgiving.  Brian’s parents came as well, and we also joined up with some of our favorite cousins the Crows, in town to check out UC Boulder as a potential future college spot for their eldest child, Benjamin.

Here are some pics from our very fun week!

kicking leaves after church – we got to hear Auntie Jennie give an absolutely beautiful and fantastic sermon.

all the kiddos – Jaden [10 mos], Finn [2 yrs], Rylie [2.75 yrs]

Playing “tackle” with Daddy and Benjamin

 

don’t ask.

this picture accurately depicts Jennie pretty much every day – trying to balance attention between two very active little girls under 3!

let’s just say – Finn had an AWESOME time.

 

Once we got home and recovered from our week o’ fun, it was time to decorate!  Finn & Daddy put up the Christmas tree and even trimmed it one evening while I was out – what an incredible holiday treat!

the boys even hung mommy’s favorite ornament.

A week or so later, we had some Christmas pizza with the Mellon family [expecting baby #2 in February] after our failed attempt at visiting Santa Claus.  The kids loved the Pazzo’s Pizza tree!

I’m sorry, but when did my baby turn twelve?

We did Walker Christmas early with Brian’s parents and Aunt Alice.  Since we weren’t going to be home for Christmas at our place, we decided to do Finn’s “Santa” gift early – a mini kitchen set up just like mommy’s – complete with “wassee” [Finn-speak for Coffee].  It was a hit!

Nana made her absolutely delicious eggs benedict to start off our day right!  Not to worry – sous chef Finn was there to help.

This was really the first Christmas that Finn was aware of what was going on around the presents.  To his credit, he really wanted to open everything [not just unwrap & move on], but as you can imagine that took some time.  He had a blast, but I daresay those of us watching had just as great of a time.

A nice long nap set us up nicely for the second half of the day and gave the family time to watch a showing of Christmas Vacation while I got dinner rolling.

post-nap snacks – YUM!

quick walk at dusk while mommy pulls the rest of the meal together.

mmmm.  roast leg of lamb with oregano/lemon roasted potatoes.  not to worry, I’ll be outlining my menu on my other blog very soon.

We finished off the evening with a variety of Christmassy treats and coffee.  Really a fun, delicious & magical day.  And just the start of all the Christmas fun to come!

A week later, we were off to Oregon, spending Christmas week with my family on the farm.  My brother Greg was home for the first time in well over a year, and I couldn’t wait for Finn to get the chance to get to know his Uncle Greg a bit better.

Even better, Uncle Greg is a darn fine cook – he made us a Christmas Eve menu that would make most Oregon restaurants blush.

this was just a side dish – caramelized Brussels sprouts with rigatoni pasta cooked like risotto vs. being boiled.  yum yum yum.

Turns out the Walker Christmas warm up worked well in getting Finn ready for the “real” Christmas.  He still wanted to open everything, but didn’t seem quite as distracted this time around.  As usual, our families were over-generous with the goodies for both us & Finn.

finn was our present elf.  he started things off with a nice big bottle of scotch for Papa

uncle greg learning how toy packaging slowly drives parents to the brink of insanity.

all the ryan ladies in the kitchen…

while the menfolk discuss politics.

greg & cody playing kinect adventures.

cooper and ollie look like friends here, but they spent most of the day fighting pretty convincingly.  a couple more days and they would have been best pals.

Christmas was over, but our week was just kicking off.  We stayed for a few more days, during which BW and my dad went skiing/snowboarding and I had a chance to catch up with Dan Williams, Carrie Souvenir & Jeanne Sowa and all our kids [7 of them between 18 months and 10 years]. 

BW and Finn had fun exploring the farm as well, and had a few fun pics to document the trip…

Then some more lovely shots from Christmas day, using BW’s new Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 [thank you, Microsoft]:

see you next year!