Little Princesses

Today we went to our favorite dinner theatre to see Rodgers' and Hammerstein's "Cinderella."  John, Katie and I went with John's parents and brother, and family friends Bev and her granddaughter Audrey.  Katie called Audrey "Laundry" and had a great time dancing around with her and watching the show.  Here are a few photos and video from our time.

Audrey and Katie meet one of the wicked stepsisters -- yes, that is a man in drag.

2009 in Review: Christmas

Christmas 2009 was a weeklong affair for our family. Every bit of it was a blessing.

This was Joshua's first Christmas. He learned that wrapping paper is more fun than what's inside, and that you have to eat it fast before Mommy and Daddy realize you've got it.

On the other end of the spectrum, this was the first year Katie could start to understand the concepts behind Christmas. If you ask her whose birthday Christmas is, she says it's Jesus' birthday. She has memorized the entire 16-line poem about Baby Jesus that's in her Toddler Bible. We kept Santa talk to a minimum this year and instead anticipated the birth of Baby Jesus. Katie also is totally enraptured by two Christmas specials: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (my favorite Christmas special of all time) and A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The weekend before Christmas, we were supposed to travel to visit my grandma and extended family, but we were snowed out. The weekend wasn't a total bust though. We were able to enjoy several feet of snow, and a few days later we ventured out to join some friends for a night of dinner and caroling. Katie enjoyed singing, playing simple musical instruments, and dancing around with her friends. And Jenn and Jeff, our hosts of the evening, were thoughtful enough to give each of the kids gifts that were especially suited to their personal interests. What a wonderful night.

On December 23, we travelled to John's parents' house, where we enjoyed a day and a half with his family. After a delicious home-cooked brunch on December 24, we gathered around the tree for presents.

Joshua's gifts that day included a personalized sippy cup, a fun whirling toy, his first set of blocks, a reindeer hat, a sock monkey jack-in-the-box...

... and of course, his favorite gift of all: Ribbon!


Poor Joshua was not amused when Daddy dressed him in the clothes that came on Katie's new camouflage-wearing stuffed moose.

Katie received several wonderful gifts as well, but the best was saved for last. Oma pulled out John's sister Laura's old baby doll and cradle, as well as several sets of clothes that Oma had handsewn this fall. Now Oma and Katie will have hours of fun dressing and undressing the baby doll -- a doll Oma and Katie have named "Baby Lucy" (since that's the name I had wanted to use for Katie).



Even the dogs got gifts! Here JPa presents Jamie's dog Brooks with the holiday tennis ball we bought him.

After naptime, we got dolled up and went out for Christmas Eve dinner. Katie wore the new snowman dress that Oma had just given her, and Joshua wore his Santa outfit.

After a wonderful 36 hours with John's family, we headed home to get a few Zzzz's before Christmas morning at my parents' house.

Every year, even when none of us were kids, Santa Claus has come to my parents' house. My mom makes all of us squeeze onto the stairs outside the closed-off living room while she walks through the living room and ooohs and aaahs over all the things that Santa has brought us. Then she walks over to the door, verbally tortures us some more, and finally lets us in. Each individual or family has an entire chair full of unwrapped gifts that Santa has brought us. Our family's chair is the one on the right -- you can see my mom peeking through the door delivering the verbal torture to those of us outside.

(I probably should explain the verbal torture -- she's just trying to get us excited and impatient -- her "Are you ready? Do you want to see what Santa brought you?" was very effective at increasing our anticipation when we were kids. Now she gets more reactions along the lines of, "Are you done yet, Mom, or can I go back to bed for awhile?")

Here are some photos of our family enjoying each other and the generous bounty of gifts.

The last photo is my brother Stephen with a John Calvin bobblehead doll that my parents had special-ordered for him -- although when Stephen opened the box, we discovered that Calvin's head must have bobbled a little too hard!

More photos, including Lindsey's homemade ribbons, Stephen holding Joshua while I took my turn at Scrabble, and Daniel pushing Joshua around in Joshua's new Tonka truck:

Dinner was supposed to be at 1 pm (Katie's naptime) but it wasn't ready till 3 pm, so we tried to encourage Katie to take a nap while she waited. John laid down to encourage her to sleep, and his efforts were successful in getting at least one person to sleep.

Merry Christmas, Santa Baby!

Finally, around 6 pm, we headed back home to celebrate our own family Christmas.

Here Katie opens her new (well, new to her; I bought it on eBay from a Goodwill store) Muppet Babies book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. As soon as she opened it, she started "reading" us the stories of The Three Bears and Little Bo Peep!

And here is a video of Katie and Joshua playing with the musical instruments that Santa brought Katie at my parents' house:

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We sure did.