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]
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!
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