Christmas 2008, Part 2

Sorry for the delay in posting a Christmas update! See Part 1 for photos of Katie enjoying specific gifts.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Our entire family travelled 5 1/2 hours to attend our extended family Christmas celebration. My niece Alli (same age as Katie) threw up a few times that morning, but her dad (my brother) assured us that since she didn't have a fever, he was pretty sure she wasn't sick and that she had just consumed some spoiled milk. None of us wanted to skip out on the party after driving so long to get there, so we all hoped my brother was correct. Unfortunately, he was not.

There were 29 of us attending the party. Over the next several days, 17 of us had full-fledged stomach flu and several others were under the weather. I can't believe a toddler could be so contagious to get us all sick, esp. since the party was only a few hours long and some of us were avoiding her possible germs (including me).

On a happy note, we did have great family time, both at the extended family gathering that afternoon, and back at the hotel that evening with just my immediate family. Since Stephen and Lindsey were heading to Seattle for Christmas, we exchanged gifts with them at the hotel.




Sunday, December 21, 2009

The next day we all travelled back home, and while John, Katie and I made it home before the flu hit, my parents and brothers were not so lucky. They ended up spending the night at my brother Mike's apartment because they couldn't stay out of the bathroom long enough to make it the next hour home. The flu hit Katie and I that night. I won't go into the nasty details, but for me it was 12 hours of violent illness followed by a few days of feeling awful. Katie's little body thankfully didn't have to deal with the intensity I had to deal with, but it did take her over a week to fully recover. And that week unfortunately included Christmas Day. John stayed home from work to care for us and thankfully he didn't get it as bad as we did -- just felt punky one day.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Our first Christmas Eve adventure was a trip to the pediatrician's office to see if Katie was well enough to escape isolation on Christmas Eve. No such luck. We were supposed to spend Christmas Eve with John's family, including a super-nice meal and a Christmas Eve church service, but the idea of passing along the grossest flu ever forced our decision to stay home. We were really bummed that day -- John had never spent Christmas away from his family before -- but decided to make our own Christmas Eve traditions at home. Off I went to CVS to pick up medicine and Pedialyte for Katie, as well as a number of stocking stuffers to make the evening a little more special.

So if we carry on our 2008 Christmas Eve into long-term traditions, here's what we'll have:

- Watch "Elmo's Potty Time" DVD.
- Eat Boston Market takeout for our special Christmas Eve dinner.
- Place a two-foot Christmas tree on a TV so we can put presents under it. [We hadn't bothered to get a full-size tree this year for many reasons (we weren't planning to be home for Christmas, Katie would have made a mess of the needles and ornaments all season, I was at half-capacity because of pregnancy and broken foot, etc.). I'm so glad John's parents were nice enough to mail us a little tree so we had one to use!]
- Watch Katie not get through all of her gifts because she's too tired and sick to want to open any more.
- Wait until Katie goes to bed to exchange gifts between John and Jen.

I'm happy to lose most of these traditions in future years, but I like the last one. It was fun to be able to immediately enjoy the gifts that John and I gave each other, rather than have to wait for Katie to go to bed. John gave me a really nice foot/calf massager (esp. appropriate for pregnant feet!) and I gave him a Wii game system. Here are some photos from Christmas Eve.



Thursday, December 25, 2008

We expected to have to stay home on Christmas Day as well. We were supposed to celebrate that day with my family and my grandma, but my grandma ended up being too sick to join us, and the rest of my family had already had the flu, so we ended up being able to spend Christmas Day with them after all. It wasn't quite the exuberant Christmas our family usually has, between still recovering from the flu and some hard times that certain family members are going through right now, but it was still so wonderful to be able to spend that special time with my brothers and parents and niece and nephew. What a wonderful family I have. Here are some photos from Christmas Day.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Katie was finally well enough on Saturday for us to make the hour trek to John's parents' new house to celebrate with his family. As soon as we arrived, Katie was bombarded with what seemed like dozens of presents! She was in paradise! After 20 minutes of "Katie Christmas", we finally started exchanging gifts amongst the adults. And that's when John and I realized with horror that because of a miscommunication, we had accidentally left almost all of our gifts for his family at our house! Ack!

Thankfully John's family had flexible timing, because our Saturday afternoon visit (that was originally supposed to be a Christmas Eve visit) then turned into a full-weekend visit. I went back home, picked up the gifts and some overnight items, went to a party some of my high school friends were having, and came back up to John's parents that night. And it all turned out for the best, because we had so much more time with John's family than we would have had with our original or even our secondary plans. John's train-loving father enjoyed showing Katie a local train display, and she learned to say "choo choo". We had several meals with John's family, attended church with them on Sunday morning, had an extra round of gift exchange thanks to our little mishap, and enjoyed a sleepover at JayPa and Oma's house (incidentally, "Grammy" has now changed her name to "Oma" since Katie can say "Ama" and since "Oma" is a German term for grandma). Here are some photos from our weekend.

Christmas 2008, Part 1

Happy New Year!

I'm hopelessly behind on this blog, so I'm going to throw up a few photos and a video of Katie enjoying some of her Christmas gifts, and will tell you our family's Christmas tale a little later with more photos.

Katie was sick on Christmas, so we spent Christmas Eve at home. Poor baby -- you can tell she doesn't look well in these photos. On Christmas Eve, she opened up some Sesame Street DVDs and a Melissa & Doug puzzle:


Since the rest of my family had been sick that week as well, we were thankfully able to get together with them on Christmas Day without worrying about spreading germs. Grandma and Grandpa (my parents) gave Katie several gifts, including an Elmo Live! doll and an interactive Elmo book:

My parents gave me a pretty pearl necklace/earring set, but Katie quickly claimed them for herself:

And Uncle Mike (my brother) gave Katie a giant car, which she loves riding around our house these days:On Christmas Day, Katie also got to open up another gift from Mommy and Daddy -- a barking, walking dog that we picked up for her at the beach. Despite the wierd expression, she loves her "puppy"!

Several days later, when we were pretty sure the flu was a thing of the past, we were finally able to celebrate Christmas with John's family. Here Katie's Aunt Laura helps her ride the beautiful neighing rocking horse that Uncle Jamie and Aunt Amanda gave her.

John's parents, Grammy and JayPa, spoiled a happy Katie with a boatload of gifts. That's what grandparents are for, right? Here Katie sits atop a packaged alphabetical/numerical puzzle mat while holding her new baby doll. The box with her new playhouse is at her feet.


Katie also received a LeapFrog magnetic farm from Aunt Laura (John's sister). The highlight of the farm should be that Katie gets to match animal heads and tails, but she's been having way too much fun dancing to the songs the farm makes:

Thanks to everyone who helped turn my sick daughter's Christmas week into a week of fun and toys!

Quality Time with Grammy, JayPa, and Krista

On Sunday, John's parents (Grammy and JayPa) brought us dinner and cheer. We love how much we get to see them, and Katie always loves spending time with her grandparents.

After dinner, JayPa sat Katie on his lap so she could play piano with him. Doesn't she look like she's reading music? She even has her fingers curved. Looks like JayPa already has a pianist-in-training!



And Grammy sang "Old McDonalds Farm" to Katie using a finger puppet book:


The next day we got to have dinner with our dear friend Krista, visiting from Colorado. John and I met Krista through church, and Krista later helped me get my job at Heritage. She's been a dear friend for many years, and I've missed her since she moved back home to CO a few years ago. What fun to catch up with her, and to introduce her to Katie.

Reverend Daddy

Last summer we spent nearly every Sunday at the Grachur Club, a place we belong to along a local river. This summer we've only made it down twice, the first being July 6, when John was scheduled to organize the Sunday morning service. John preached about leaving a legacy, and I pulled together an offertory at the last minute. Accompanying us on the keyboard was none other than John's dad, "Jay-Pa," and Katie decided to help "warm up the organ" beforehand. She also rang the bell to summon everyone to the service (with the help of Daddy and Uncle Jamie).

A Few More June Adventures

Here are a few more of our adventures from June!

Family Reunion: We attended John's family's annual get-together on June 28. Katie enjoyed meeting some of her distant cousins for the first time. (Last year's get-together was held while I was still in the hospital after delivering Katie!)

At the reunion, Katie tried to give her relative Maeve a hug, but Maeve simply fell backwards. Thankfully she didn't seem to be hurt!

My friend Jessie came over for girl time on June 29, and Katie had no problem cuddling up in her lap, especially when there were french fries to steal:

Katie and I took Bella on a walk on June 30, and halfway around the block, it started POURING rain! I ran as fast as I could in flip flops while pushing a stroller and holding a leash. Katie wailed as she got more and more soaked, but was willing to pose for a picture afterwards on her way up to a hot bath:

I'm especially thankful for the elderly neighbor lady on the next block who saw us in distress and tried to coax us all into her car for the last block of our walk -- er, run. But somehow I don't think squeezing a stroller, baby, mommy, and Saint Bernard mix into her car would have been faster than continuing to run the last block. :-)

Speaking of Bella, here are a few photos of her with Katie and Katie's "Jay-Pa" and me at the beach house earlier in June. And yes, I HAD just rolled out of bed.

Dancin' for Daddy's Day

The day after Katie's birthday BBQ was Fathers Day, and we headed up to visit John's parents and enjoy a delicious Fathers Day brunch with them. Here's a fun photo of Katie with her daddy and her grandpa "Jay-Pa".

After brunch, we headed back to Jay-Pa and Grammy's house for a bit, and were thoroughly entertained by Katie dancing for us. Both of these videos simply crack me up.

Then we went home, walked the dog, and left again to celebrate Fathers Day with my family. Finally, we were home again and Katie was able to give her daddy her own Fathers Day present (2 old John Cusack movies). She seemed much more interested in opening the card though.

She's Walking!!

On Sunday, June 8, just a few hours after learning that her best friend Daniel (7 weeks older) was walking, Katie decided she couldn't let Daniel outpace her and walked for the first time! She took three steps to get to a toy. So exciting! While I couldn't get a video of the first few steps (we were watching National Treasure 2 at the time -- how dare she not give us warning beforehand?), here's a video taken shortly afterwards which shows a step or two.

And while I'm sharing the good news, let me share a few more highlights from this past week:

While we were dodging tornadoes, my friend Amy and her daughters took advantage of the regional blackout to come over for a fun sleepover! The next day, after our power finally came on, I babysat the girls and Katie fell asleep on 10-year-old Caitlin's lap as they watched "Hairspray."

Friday night our family took advantage of the 3-day weekends that John now gets every other week (what a blessed life we have with his new job!) and headed to the beach to visit with John's parents. It was way too hot to actually lie on the beach this weekend, but John's parents watched Katie several times so we could sleep in, go to the movies twice, and go out to dinner. What a wonderful, relaxing weekend -- especially when John's parents were supposed to be celebrating their own 36-year anniversary. (Speaking of which, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, GRAMMY and JAY-PA!) Highlights from the weekend were Katie walking for the first time, trying chocolate ice cream for the first time, and enjoying her new doggie raft in the pool. She also now moo's spontaneously when I point to a picture of a cow.