Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’

Dearest Heron,

Hello, sweetie! It’s been so wonderful spending time with you these past two months! You’ve grown so much and have been such a joy in our life! At your five month doctor’s appointment, you weighed 17 lb 7 oz (72nd percentile) and were 25 inches long (25th percentile.) You are sitting up on your own and reaching for toys, rolling over, passing objects from one hand to another, and babbling nonstop!

You love your brother Rhino so much. Whenever he’s around, you watch him, smile at him, and laugh at him. You can be in a terrible mood for me, but Rhino can almost always cheer you up! He likes to play with you and tickle you. You aren’t yet too interested in playing with him, but I’m sure soon you two will be having so much fun together!

In the past two months you’ve had your first Thanksgiving (but no turkey for you!), have met your Aunt Jen, starting attending the nursery in church, and had your first Christmas and New Year’s! You loved Christmas, playing with (chewing on) all your new toys and crinkling the wrapping paper. You also like going to the nursery in church where you can swing and watch all the other babies and toddlers. You usually get a little hungry and I come and visit with you, but I’m told you are usually very calm throughout church. Your brother liked nursery at first, and then eventually had some separation anxiety for a few months, so I won’t be surprised if you start to experience the same feelings soon.

You are starting to sleep better throughout the night. You still sleep in bed with Mommy (Daddy works at night so he never gets to sleep when you do.) You used to stay up with me and sleep downstairs or wait to go to bed until I did. I’ve just started being able to put you down at seven in the crib where you’ll sleep for a few hours before I come up to bed and snuggle down with you.

Daddy and I (and Rhino!) love you so much and can’t wait to have more fun with you next month!

Lots of Love,
Mommy

Rhino dearest,

The past two months with you have been a joy, as always! You are such a sweetheart, a bright little boy, and always make us laugh! You didn’t have a doctor’s visit this month, but did have a WIC appointment where we were able to get your height and weight. At 22 months you were 26 pounds, 12 ounces (44th percentile) and 32.75 inches tall (22nd percentile.)

Your vocabulary has really taken off these past few months! You say all sorts of words like shoe, boot, two, hat, cheese, snow, car, plane, up, down, juice, hair, eye, nose, mouth, chin, and thank you (“dat doo”). You don’t string words together to make simple sentences yet, but I have the feeling that’s coming soon! You still use your words together with sign language symbols, but we haven’t taught you any new signs lately.

Some exciting things have happened these past months! Your Aunt Jen came to visit and had such a good time with you! You entertained her a lot with your dancing, silly playing around, and guitar hero strumming. She tried for ten days to get you to say Aunt Jen, but you wouldn’t even try it. Then, after she left, you were looking at photos on our digital frame and saw a picture of her, pointed, and said Aunt Jen. Daddy was on the computer and looked up with surprise, and asked if that’s what you had said. It was pretty clear. Too bad you couldn’t do that a few days earlier for your aunt! We did lots of fun things with your aunt while she was visiting, like shopping, going out to lots of different restaurants, a wonderful Thanksgiving, checking out the Aviation and Science museum, visiting the fish market in Hachinohe, going to the beach to see shipwrecks and horses, and playing games. She can’t wait to see you again!

We also celebrated Christmas last month! It was your second Christmas and was a little more exciting for you than your first Christmas. You enjoyed getting advent treats every day in December, loved all the sweet goodies we munched throughout the month, and really loved the tree and would consistently try to blow out the lights and take down all the ornaments! You received some wonderful gifts from all the people that love you, including a tricycle, a Mr. Potato Head, a huge box of Lego Duplos, some wonderful wooden puzzle toys and lacing beads, lots of snazzy clothes, and your favorite ball – a Blue’s Clues ball! It was a fun, quiet Christmas and you seemed to really have a great time!

You are still such a good big brother and are really bonding with Heron. He adores you so much and you make him laugh when no one else can. You shower him with kisses, want to hold him, and share your toys (by forcing them into his little hands) and your sippy cup (though he doesn’t care for that yet!) You two are so sweet together and I’m looking forward to the days ahead where you will play together!

Thanks for another fantastic few months with you, Rhino! Daddy and I love you more and more each day and can’t wait to have another great month with our big boy!

Love always,
Mommy

We had our first family Christmas at home this year. It is a little lonely being so far away from family, but we had a beautiful Christmas with the boys and our friends. We had lots of lovely snow for Christmas, cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa. Rhino ran downstairs in the morning after we read Luke 2, excited about his advent treat that he’d gotten for the past 24 days. He completely overlooked the tree and presents and ran straight for the empty advent calendar. We had to turn him around and set him straight before he saw all the presents and pointed with a great big “WOW!”

Rhino enjoyed unwrapping the gifts. He’s much better at it this year than he was last year, when he’d only peel a tiny little scrap at a time! Everything unwrapped received another “WOW!” and he was just as excited about Heron’s toys as he was his own. Heron liked to just lie under the tree and gnaw on his toys, then eventually fell asleep on the sofa from all the excitement!

We received so many wonderful gifts from our family. We really are blessed to have such wonderful people who care about us. I only wish they all could have been with us to share in the festivities. I would love it if all our family, both Matt’s and mine, could come together for the holidays, but I don’t really see it happening anytime soon. We’d love to go back to the States to spend future Christmases with family, but while we’re stationed in Japan, it is too much of a trip to trek all over the country for the holiday. Maybe someone will want to come out here with us one of these years!

Christmas is just a few days away and now it finally looks like it! Our tree is up and decorated, along with our nativity, stockings, some random decorations on the wall, and the advent calendar. The advent calendar is one that my parents have had since I was little, that my brother and sister and I used to look forward to every December morning. It’s a garland of numbered burlap mittens and stockings to hold treats. It was passed down to me this year and I put it up for the boys. We picked up lots of small goodies from the Daiso, ¥100 store. Rhino’s figured it all out and comes downstairs first thing in the morning and heads straight for the corner with his treat! Next year Heron will be old enough to enjoy the small bits of chocolate and tiny toys, too. We also have stockings for the boys hanging on our wall, along with mine and Matt’s. Betty, an old friend of my parents’, made my stocking for my very first Christmas. I know it isn’t an adult’s stocking, but I love it and still want to hang it for myself each year. My mom made Matt’s stocking a few years ago to match. She’s been commissioned to make them for the boys as well, but is falling behind a little! So she sent us these cute store-bought stockings as place holders, until she’s finished embroidering new ones for them!

Pretty much everything has been up since Thanksgiving, the only problem around here is that the weather has been so nice! We got a little dusting of snow last month, but hadn’t seen anything since. Well, it’s finally happening. We’ve got enough out there for Matt to shovel! Rhino is excited about it, looks out the window and says snow (in a cute little nasal voice.) I’m looking forward to snowballs, snowmen, and snow angels in our near future!

The ladies of Faith Baptist Church regularly have a fellowship, with potluck snacks, our pastor’s wife giving some sort of devotion, and lots of chatting. This month’s was a Christmas fellowship, of course, and we were all to bring ornaments to exchange. Mrs. Popwell stood in front of a decorated tree and spoke on ornamentation while we sipped punch and munched sugar cookies. Then she set a wrapped ornament in front of each of us and read to us the story of Jesus’ birth. Each time she said the word left or right (which was quite often!), we were to pass our ornament to the person sitting beside us (right or left, depending on which word was said.) This was fun and got moving pretty quickly, it was a little confusing at times! When the story was over, we unwrapped our ornaments. I got a sweet, little Hachinohe horse (like the horses here.) It’s red and has Misawa and the year painted on it. I love ornaments like this, that will remind of us where we’ve been and what we were doing. I made a felt gingerbread man, which turned out really cute. I wanted to do a snowman also, but just didn’t have the time. I just freehanded the figures onto paper, cut it out and pinned it to the felt as a template. Then when the felt pieces were cut out, I embroidered details on to each side and blanket stitched around the edges. I like it a lot and think I’ll make more (and snowmen, reindeer, etc. in the same fashion) for next year’s Christmas for our own tree!

Thanksgiving around here has been pretty relaxing. I brined our turkey last night and roasted it up today and it was delicious! I made a couple of pies that turned out so-so, and Jen and I whipped up some side dishes. Matt prefers instant dressing rather than homemade and canned cranberry sauce to real berries, so that makes things a lot easier (though next year we will have homemade stuff, too.) I had a butternut squash that I had planned to use for some amazingly delicious butternut squash soup, but thought it might make a nice side dish instead. I made some carmelized butternut squash and it was okay, but no one else really liked it and I didn’t love it. I should have just gone with the soup! Rhino enjoyed his meal and tried almost everything, but really just wanted to eat cranberry sauce.

We decorated for Christmas after our meal. We have an artificial, pre-lit tree, stockings, an advent calendar, a nativity, and some other small decorations. We put up all the special ornaments I had as a kid and that we’ve collected since we’ve been married. We didn’t have a tree topper, so we went out to the mall to browse their disappointing selection. We found an acceptable plastic blue and silver star, gave it to Rhino, and he topped our tree. We put on some Christmas music and are starting to get into the spirit. Now we just need some snow!

Hello, darling!

Your mommy has been a little lazy about writing your letters the few months! So much has happened, but I’m going to only talk a little bit about it this time.

9 Month Letter (Nov 13, 2008)

During your eighth month you started to “army crawl”: pulling yourself forward with your arms while lying on your stomach. You got around for about three days like that before you figured out you can use your hands and knees to move, too! Now you are all over the place!

You didn’t have a doctor’s appointment this past month, but we did weigh you in. You still haven’t gained any weight since we checked when you turned 8 months, so the doctor did want to see what is going on. You were a little sick for a week and you’ve been getting more exercising with crawling, so the doctor isn’t worried at all.

You’ve been trying more solid foods lately, too. We haven’t yet found anything you won’t eat! You are great about eating your vegetables and this month tried steamed broccoli, which you had lots of fun with. You also like mangoes, kiwi slices, and cottage cheese.

This month you traveled a little bit to the towns around us. We went to Rokkasho for their yearly Salmon Festival. You got to see lots of big fish swimming in the river and also in the pools at the festival. Daddy was hoping to get to catch a salmon with his hands, but we didn’t get to the festival early enough. You had fun snuggled up with me and looking at all the Japanese people, fish, and food.

The big news of this month is that Daddy and I found out that you are going to be a big brother next summer! This is very exciting for us because we knew we wanted you to have a little brother or sister that was close to your age to play with. You went with us to my first doctor’s appointment, where we got to hear Little Baby’s heartbeat and even watch a little movie of him or her! It would be neat if you were a little older and knew what was going on so you could be excited too, but I know when the baby comes you will be such a fantastic brother and you two will have so much fun together!

10 Month Letter (Dec 13, 2008)

Now you’re 10 months old and the last month has been very busy! You are crawling around everywhere and starting to get into things! Daddy and I have to put more thought into what we leave around on the floor or what doors we leave open so you don’t get into something you shouldn’t. It’s a lot of work!

In November you saw your first snow fall. It was exciting for Daddy and I because it was our first snow since we’ve been here in Japan, and we haven’t seen any in quite some time! We took you out in the backyard so you could get a closer look, but you really just wanted to eat it. I’d walk you up to the snow on the tree branches or pick some up in my hand for you to get a better look and you’d just reach forward with your mouth to get a taste!

This month we also started our vacation back to the US to see all our family for Christmas. You got to take a couple of trains to get to Tokyo, then fly from Japan to California and were really good, considering how long you’d been up and how long the flight was! In the airport in Tokyo, waiting for our delayed plane to California, you started “cruising”. Daddy was eating some french fries and had them sitting on the chair and you were crawling around on the floor. When you saw those french fries, you pulled right up on a chair and walked yourself down to get a bite! You poor thing, you worked so hard to get over to the snacks, but of course we didn’t let you have any! Food seems to be your biggest motivation to try new things! We spent a little time in California where you got to see some people from our old church, who you’d met before (but you were just born and definitely wouldn’t remember!) We went to see our friends the Lasleys and their little girls. Unfortunately, when we stopped by the girls were asleep, though it would have been fun to see you with them! I know we’ll see all of them again though, and you’ll have a good time when you get to meet up with them then. We took another plane from California to Texas, to see your Pop (my father), Dandy (my grandfather), and GG (my grandmother) as well as all your great uncles & aunt, etc! You turned 10 months in Texas and had a nice trip meeting and visiting with lots of people.

When we’re at home, I usually feed you some baby food that I made or pieces of our meals and rarely ever use normal baby food. We thought that for the long trip, we’d pick some up in case there were meals that we couldn’t give to you or we were unable to cook for you. I was a little worried that, since you don’t eat baby food at home, you wouldn’t really like it. Boy, was I surprised! You ate lots of baby food from jars on the airplane, in the airports, in California, and in Texas and loved it! You’ve become a lot more demanding for food lately, too! When you see me start to get food ready, you’ll whine and hold your fists out and shake a little. Sometimes you even yell at me to “hurry up!” I know that you just get hungry, need to learn a little bit of patience, and really, really like your food!

11 Month Letter (Jan 13, 2009)

You spent your tenth month mostly back in the states, still visiting over Christmas. After we finished visiting my family in Texas, we flew to New York to see Daddy’s family. It was much colder there and you met even more people who were very happy to see you! We spent most of our time with Grandma, Grandpa, and your Aunt Jen at home. Other family members and friends would come over to visit and everyone enjoyed just watching you crawl and cruise around the room, eat your meals, play with toys, and they took lots of pictures of you! You got so much attention and really seemed to enjoy it. We visited at Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s (Daddy’s grandparents) home and they had lots of people over to visit. We got to meet another baby boy, Mitchell, who is just 3 weeks older than you (Daddy’s cousin’s son!) You two had fun pointing at and touching each other and playing peek-a-boo around a chair! Mom-mom and Pop-pop have a staircase, which you hadn’t ever seen much of (right now we live on one floor.) We wanted to see what you would do with stairs, and to our surprise you took right to them! You zipped up eight stairs and then weren’t quite sure how to get down.

We weren’t in New York over Christmas, but we had an early Christmas so we could all celebrate together. You received lots of wonderful toys and handsome clothes and are having so much fun playing with everything. One of the best gifts you got was a little baby piano that plays notes and songs, lights up, and is just your height. Now that you can pull up to a stand on things, it’s so much fun to watch you play with this. One of your cutest recent developments is “dancing” to all kinds of music. While at the piano, you will play a couple notes or start a song, then rock back and forth, and repeat this over and over. You had so much fun with the piano!

We noticed your dancing skills last month when I would sing to you or put on music. It started out with just rocking back and forth, but you’ve developed all sorts of new “moves” since then. Anytime someone would sing a song to you (Grandpa would sing “yummy, yummy, yummy in my tummy, tummy, tummy” while you’re eating), put on Christmas music, or play a toy that makes music, you’d immediately start “be-bopping” (this is what Daddy calls your dancing!) We love it and can’t get enough of it!

After New York, we flew to California to see Grammy (my mother.) Your Aunt Andrea, Uncle Michael, and cousin Amelia, as well as Uncle Matt and his girlfriend Adria came to visit at the same time as well. Amelia is just a week younger than you are and we were all very excited for you two to meet! You guys were so cute together and seemed to have quite a good time! In Colorado you met Jack and Tilley, Grammy’s two little dogs (you also met Jasmine and Mugsy at Grandma and Grandpa’s, so you had seen dogs before.) You didn’t like when they’d lick at your face, but you did enjoy being around and them and petting their fur. We had lots of fun at Grammy’s, going out to eat, making lots of food in the kitchen, relaxing with your aunts and uncles, and having Christmas!

Christmas with you was a great time! Daddy and I went to church on Christmas Eve and Aunt Andrea and Uncle Michael stayed to watch you. When we came back, you sat up with Daddy and I as we opened some gifts. Then when we woke up on Christmas morning, you and Amelia got to dig around in your stockings for some neat books and car toys! We had lots of presents under the tree for the two of you. Neither of you seemed to want to tear the paper off the gifts, but you really did want all the bows! Once the paper was off, you did have fun with it and the ribbons. You both got some wonderful new books, stuffed animals, Little People toys, and some very nice clothes. Even more people came over Christmas afternoon to meet you and eat more food! After Christmas we did more fun things like going to see a cave, which you really enjoyed. When we were in a big, echo-y room underground, you would babble and make all sorts of cute sounds!

You were extra-good on the flight back to Japan (it was an even longer than the flight to the States!) and on the three trains to get back home. You were wonderful to travel with, but we probably won’t go so far away again anytime too soon! You can read more about our December visits in the US in an earlier post I made.

Sorry, baby, for the long letter that covers the last three months! I will be better in the future about not skipping these so that you can learn about what your life was like as a little boy. As always, Daddy and I love you so much and are having the best time of our lives getting to know you better each day!

Hugs and Kisses,
Mommy

I see that my last post date is in October. I’ve been stopping by to write something for weeks, but really, I’ve just been intimidated. So much has happened in the past three months, I’ll never find the time to write about it all! Well, now that I’ve gotten down to it, I’m giving you the extremely abridged version!

I’m really not remembering much about November! A few things stick out, though. Rhino started crawling around, we got our first Misawa snow (and Rhino’s first snow ever!), we had two nice Thanksgivings (one with the church, then a second in our home with our friends), and we discovered we’re going to have another baby in July ‘09! This of course is very exciting and just the age spacing we were hoping for. Thanksgiving was nice, too, and not very hectic at all. Liz, Nicole, and I split up the responsibilities. Really, all I had to do was make up some cranberry sauce and veggies and provide a clean home. The food was all wonderful and we had a terrific first Thanksgiving in Japan!

December will take a while to describe. I had my first prenatal appointment and we saw the ultrasound of our 8 week-old little bean! Heart’s beating, there’s only one in there, everything’s looks fine, that was about it! Two days later we began our trip back to the States to visit with family for Christmas. This was wonderful, but tiring! I’m so glad we got to see all our family (though not as many friends as I had initially hoped. Everything was getting too hectic!) and have Rhino meet the rest of the folks that didn’t get to come out when he was born.

Matt wrote up a big post about the horrible details of the travel itself. He pretty much covered it all, though he didn’t mention how uncomfortable a 9 or 12 hour flight is for a pregnant woman with morning sickness. Airplanes definitely were not my friends. I won’t take this space to complain further about travel and how we never want to step foot on an airplane again (we can stick out Matt’s career here and retire in Japan!) All our destinations made the flights more than worthwhile.

We flew into LA, so we decided to rent a car and drive up to Lompoc to see our friends and recuperate for the weekend. We left at 10pm on a Friday evening and it’s an overnight flight across the international dateline to California. When I booked this flight, I just assumed: leave Friday evening, overnight flight, land Saturday morning. I know, now that I think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. When we landed in CA and the captain said that it was 2pm on Friday, I was so confused! I hadn’t planned to arrive on Friday! So, it was my first time going back in time! We picked up our car and, 3 seconds off the lot, Matt almost gets into an accident! We’ve gotten quite used to driving on the left side and very slowly in Japan. When we got on the freeway, Matt felt all nervous that he was going so fast! Well, “so fast” is 45mph and he definitely needed to kick it up a bit, as everyone else was going 80! It was scary interesting watching him get used to driving in the US again. We arrived in Lompoc, called everyone we knew, didn’t get through to anyone, so we stayed in a hotel. It was nice to just relax and decompress from the long trip by ourselves. On Saturday (the real Saturday, not the Saturday in my confused head) we met up with Wayne and Rena, the wonderful couple from church that took us in as their “kids” (theirs had all moved out) and led the Bible study we attended for 2 years. It was nice to spend the weekend with them, have a little group reunion with some other church people, and show Rhino off. We also met up with our friends Denna, Adam & Ty. We went out to for an Italian dinner to catch up and gab. They ordered a plate of pasta for Tyler (2), but we discovered Rhino is nuts for pasta, and pretty much ate Ty’s whole plate! That was the first we saw of Rhino vehemently demanding table food and it was quite amusing, though slightly embarrassing to be out in a restaurant with a baby who yelled for food as if we hadn’t given him any for months! After church on Sunday we went over to Jody and Roy’s to see their sweet baby girls, have some lunch, and catch up. The weekend was so short and we were fighting to stay awake during the day, so we didn’t end up doing all that I had planned. I couldn’t get a hold of Danielle and would have loved to stop by work (it was drill weekend), but it just didn’t happen. We drove back down to LA on Sunday night, got another hotel (oh my, another whole big terrible story, too!) and caught a flight to Dallas the next morning.

These descriptions will probably get shorter, now, as there’s still plenty more. Texas was nice. Papa was the only one to have met Rhino, back in March, so it was wonderful that all my uncles, aunt, grandparents, etc. got to meet him! Unfortunately, Rhino hadn’t gotten used to the time zones yet and had just started teething again, so he was pretty grumpy a lot of the week. We kept busy, though. We had a nice Mexican lunch out at the Tupinamba, a restaurant that my family always goes to when I come to visit! We got to see my brother, Matthew, who also lives in Dallas and finally meet his girlfriend, Adria. The five of us went to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, had lunch at Chili’s, and went over to their apartment for dinner and board games. Over the week we got plenty of gaming in — Sequence, Clue, Phase 10, Scattergories — and watched a couple of movies (Eagle Eye, The Other Boleyn Girl, As Good As It Gets). I also went with Grandmother and Aunt Pattie to a quarterly ladies’ luncheon at their church, which was really great! We had a delicious lunch, browsed through second-hand goodies to buy to support their Friendship House, and listened to a wonderful pianist and singer perform Christmas songs. Then on Friday, Papa took us out to the Granada, sort of his second home, with Matthew and Adria to see Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis. It wasn’t exactly our style of music, but it was nice to get out and see the theater and hang out with my dad and brother. We couldn’t bring Rhino, so it was his first time with a babysitter, Papa’s friend Kay. I was really worried that I’d get him to sleep at her house, leave, then he’d wake up and cry and never go back down for her. He did wake up a couple hours after we had left, and he cried for a little bit, then fell back asleep — I was quite impressed! Rhino got a few cute gifts from the Texas family. Papa got him some clothes, including a cute Dallas Cowboys onesie. Rhino also got a Bible stories book and a 2008 coin set. It was a nice time visiting with all the family and I’m glad they finally got to meet Rhino! We left Sunday morning for the next leg of our trip: New York!

Okay, so these aren’t getting much shorter! Well, not to New York. We flew into Buffalo and Matt’s parent’s were there to take us down to Obi. Matt’s sister, Jen, was waiting at home for us and everyone was so excited to see Rhino (and us, I guess!) We got in pretty late, so we pretty much went straight to bed. The rest of the week was filled with a lot of family (Matt has a lot of family close by!) visiting and staring at, taking pictures of Rhino! We went over to Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s one night to meet up with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.! Rhino got to meet Mitchell, a little boy just 3 weeks older than him. They were so cute together! Another night the church pastor and his family came over one night for dinner and games. Jen and I got a “sisters only” afternoon one day to go get lunch and tea and browse Jo-Ann’s. Jen, Mom and I had a cookie-decorating day! Matt’s brother Jason and his fiancée came over so they could meet Rhino and we could meet her! Later that week, they were married!! I got really sick the night before and couldn’t go to their wedding, though! It was tough, I spent about 36 hours curled up on the sofa or huddled in the bathroom. Rhino pretty much had a full day without Mommy, but he did really well with Grandma and Aunt substitutes! I was bummed to not be able to attend the wedding, but at least I recovered before our flight out. We also watched some movies (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Wall-E, and lots of MST3K.) We also had an early Christmas on the 17th. Matt got more MST3K, some anime, books, cross-stitching stuff; I got some great knitting books and some others; and Rhino received so many cute clothes and toys! They’re all wonderful, but the thing he definitely loved the most was Jen’s gift: a very cute little baby piano! Rhino had recently started really enjoying music and dancing anytime any song started: a commercial jingle, someone singing, 3 notes on a piano, someone whistling, etc.! So he would stand up at the piano, bang out a few notes, dance to his music, play a few more, dance, and on and on! Everyone loved watching him play! It was a fun early Christmas! We did it again a few days later at Aunt Ginny’s with Aunt Connie & Grandpa, too. Rhino got more wonderful outfits, toys, and books. Thankfully, Mom and Dad shipped everything to our home so we didn’t have to pack all the gifts out! We left for the airport Saturday afternoon, but our flight out of Buffalo had been canceled. We made the long drive back home to sleep, and got on an early flight Sunday morning for Colorado.

Originally we had planned to arrive in Colorado two days early, rent a car, stay in Mama’s condo in Denver, and visit with friends in Fort Collins and Denver. By the time we got to Colorado, we were running out of money, car rentals were really high, I was lazy and hadn’t recently been in touch with any friends, we’d lost a day due to our canceled flight, and we were feeling pretty run down. Mama and Ron just picked us up from the airport and took us down to the Springs. I feel like a terrible friend, but it was nice to just relax at “home.” Plus, my sister, her husband and daughter were flying in just a few hours later so I’m glad that we were around to spend more time with them. We had planned to spend time with our friends Carol and Derik, who live in Omaha (and we used to work together. Matt went to tech school with both of them.) They drove down to the Springs for the weekend to see us, but it only turned into an hour that they came over and chatted after dinner on Monday. It was so nice to see them and of course I would have liked more time, things just didn’t quite work out. I’m so glad we at least got to visit for a little bit. Hopefully we’ll have another opportunity before too long! So with my sister in town, I finally got to meet my niece, Amelia! She’s 8 days younger than Rhino and I was so excited to see the two of them together. It was so interesting, they are such different babies! Rhino is a lot more vocal, interested in music and crazy about food. Amelia is all ready running around!! She likes to do her own thing a lot. They both play so differently, sleep differently, eat differently, cry differently — it was quite an experience! She is so beautiful and such a sweetheart. At 10 months, the babies weren’t really interested in playing with each other, but they did play next to each other! We joke that Amelia is sort of a “bully” — they would both be playing with toys, but she would always want to take whatever Rhino had instead! Rhino was very laid back about the whole thing and never really seemed to mind, haha! I wish we could have spent more time with Andrea and her family, but hopefully we will get to see them next year (when the babies won’t be babies anymore — waah!) Aside from watching babies in Colorado, we did actually spend time with Mama and Ron, too! Their dogs, Jack and Tilley, are very high-strung little wild dogs (but so sweet!) and we were nervous about how they’d act around the babies. We were all very surprised though, they were SO good! Whenever a dog would come up to Rhino, we’d say “dog” a lot and eventually Rhino would look at the dog and say “dauh” — he just wouldn’t say the ‘g’. I’m not counting it as a first word, but it was really close and he would do it everytime he’d see a dog! One night we were there, we went out to the Golden Bee, an English pub at the Broadmoor hotel. It’s sort of a Christmastime tradition that my Grandpa started years ago. The babies were really well behaved and loved eating crackers. We drove around afterward and looked at the light displays. We spent a lot of time at home, just relaxing, chatting, hanging out in the kitchen, watching TV, etc. Mama made some great meals that Andrea and I tried to help out with! Andrea made a delicious spinach tofu lasagna one night and Mama and I made a copy of the Olive Garden’s Zuppa Tuscana soup (my favorite!) Andrea and I made multiple visits to the Whole Foods — it was like Grocery Heaven for us! I wish we had more than our crummy commissary selection and expensive Japanese produce out here. Andrea found a Buddha’s Hand and was so excited, she bought it as decoration (I thought it was more appropriate as a Halloween decoration!) We never did use it for anything, but in the future she wants to make candied peels out of one. I found a kiwano that I had wanted to try since I found this sorbet recipe on one of my favorite foodie blogs. Well, we didn’t make a sorbet, just ate spoonfuls from it — and it was less than enjoyable! Matthew and Adria flew in on the 23rd, so now all us siblings were together with our significant others! It was quite a full house, but tons of fun. We had a great, salmon Christmas Eve dinner and filled up on Christmas cookies (Mama went overboard with the date rolls, oatmeal chocolate chip, pinwheels, hazelnut cookies, ricotta cheese sugar cookies, etc, etc.!!) before heading off to the candlelight service at First Pres. It was a beautiful service and I was so glad Matthew and Adria joined us as well. When we got home we opened all of the “grown-up presents”. Mama and Ron got each couple an awesome digital frame, which I love! We did stockings and “baby presents” Christmas morning, which was lots of fun! The babies got some adorable clothes, wonderful books, and some very cute Little People toys! Andrea, Michael and Amelia flew out the next day, so we got some time with Matthew and Adria. We all went to Cave of the Winds, which was amazing! With all the time we lived in Colorado, none of us had ever been and it’s just a few minutes from home. We left from Denver early Sunday morning for our long flight back to Japan.

The whole month was filled with such nice visits with family. I’m still getting all the photos from each location together, then I will post them to the gallery and include links in this post. I didn’t really take many pictures at all, though! I guess I was too busy with Rhino and visiting that I just didn’t think much about photos. Thankfully, other people got a few! The whole trip was very tiring and expensive (see Matt’s post!), but was definitely worthwhile! Unfortunately, it very well may be our only trip back to the States while we’re stationed in Japan. Mama and Ron, Jen, and Matt’s parents are all planning trips out to see us within the next 18 months, though!! I can’t wait to show them all the wonderful things out here!

Edit: Here are links to the vacation photos from California, Texas, New York, and Colorado!

Well, Matt and I had a pretty quiet Christmas to ourselves. We put on some carols, baked some cinnamon rolls, and opened gifts from Mama and just a couple from his family. Mama sent us language books and maps for Japan, some sweaters for each of us, new flatware (because whenever she comes to visit, we’re always running out!!), my favorite chocolates, and a great matching mommy and baby gowns! I’m definitely packing them in my hospital bag! We went over to Jody and Roy’s in the afternoon to hang out with the babies, play some games, and have a wonderful home-cooked Christmas meal. The babies are growing so much and are absolutely adorable! We brought them a toy and a blanket and to to play with their new toys, too! The boys played Portal (I got Matt The Orange Box for Christmas) and duetted some Guitar Hero II. We brought some munchies and Yahtzee and played that after a great turkey dinner (yup, I stuffed myself!) They gave us some yummy smelly candles (chocolate chip cookies and mint cookies) which make the apartment smell like Christmas baked goods. We visited with them for about 5 hours and had a great time. It was really nice to spend Christmas with our friends.

We saved most of Matt’s family’s gifts for when Jen returned from Mexico. She came up to visit on the 29th to have “Christmas 2″ with us! She was nannying for a family who was on vacation in Cabo over Christmas and really wanted to have the holiday, even a few days late, with some family. She brought us some awesome paintings (I love my green background polar bear painting — I’ll have to get some photos up here soon! And Matt got a Nightmare Before Christmas painting of hers!) She’s very artistic and did a wonderful job! We also got more baby stuff (clothes and toys, yay!), a sandwich grill, cookbooks, Mass Effect (for Matt — he was psyched!), warm clothes (and earmuffs and Matt got this hood thing that he adores), salt and pepper shakers to match our china set from Papa, etc. We were pretty modest with our gifts this year, but our families were very generous and we got tons of useful and fun things. Matt had some money and a gift card that he took to Best Buy to pick up Beautiful Katamari (I love it!), Timeshift, and Assassin’s Creed. So now he received all the cool games that he wanted this year. (Which he better enjoy now, because I don’t foresee that we’ll be buying too many video games for ourselves in our baby-filled future!)

Matt’s birthday was last night, but he works on his birthday, so we decided to celebrate early when Jen was around. So he opened birthday presents after “Christmas 2″ and we had a cake for him and all that. He got the 11th Mystery Science Theater 3000 collection and a hilarious movie, Kung Fu Hustle! For our first anniversary, Mama and Ron took us to the Melting Pot in Colorado Springs for an excellent fondue dinner. Matt often reminisces over that night as the best meal he’s ever had and how great it would be to do that again. I mentioned to Jen that a fondue pot might be a good idea for a birthday gift. So that’s just what she got him! Matt is usually excited by games and DVDs, so I was surprised at how giddy he was over a cooking appliance! We ran out to the store to stock up on ingredients for his birthday dinner. We made a yummy cheddar, spinach, and artichoke fondue for our first course, in which we dipped carrots, tortilla chips, and chunks of french bread. Then we had beef and chicken pieces to cook in a Coq Au Vin fondue, which was also excellent and all very easy. Jen had never had fondue, so it was a neat experience all around. And of course, we had a birthday cake for him. I really just haven’t felt like baking, even though I had planned to bake him a nice cake. But we picked up a pretty one from the bakery and covered the whole thing with a mix of normal birthday candles and trick candles. Of course, we were all too full from the fondue, so we’ll have leftover cake in the fridge for quite some time, I’m sure.

All in all it was a very good holiday for us! We would have loved to spend Christmas with our parents, but it’s just been a hectic time and we’re saving up our leave and money and I’ve been pretty run down, so staying home made the most sense to us. And it’s the last Christmas we’ll have without child(ren) for … well, quite some time! 2007 was a great year of lots of work, studying, and anticipation. And 2008 will bring plenty of excitement! Happy New Year!!

Last night Matt and I got together with the other three couples from our church small group. We had a nice potluck dinner over at Wayne and Rena’s (we brought an excellent salad! And had persimmon cake for the first time.) Then we carpooled to Oceano to see the Holiday Extravaganza at The Great American Melodrama. They did a great version of A Christmas Carol, then a fractured fairytale about Hansel and Gretel (and their work-out-aholic parents “Jenny and Craig”, and a lesson on junk food), topped off with a holiday Vaudeville show. They did some great bits about what Dickens carolers are really thinking, a reindeer rap, an amazing 6-man water glass orchestra of the Nutcracker, a funny 12 Days of Christmas, and plenty other goofy things. The theater was really cozy, we had two intermissions for snacks, and had a really nice time laughing with our group. I wish we had known about this place earlier because they do all sorts of shows and it would have been something Matt and I would really enjoy.