Holiday Highlights, Part I

My two little fliers and I prepared for take-off and headed up to Gigi and Papa's house several days before Christmas. Their pre-flight reading is now routine, not because anyone really cares where the emergency exits are, but more because L & R love looking at the picture of the plane "landing" on water. Uncle AJ will have to explain the physics of that at a much later age.

For the first year, Lucie and Ryan were willing to sit briefly on Santa's lap at a family party, at least until he gave them a gift, and then they bounded as fast as they could back to me. They were both impressed that Santa gave them books with their favorite "My Little Pony" and "Handy Manny" (or "Handy Mandy" in Ryan-speak) characters, and declared that he was actually a pretty nice and observant guy, despite any earlier reservations.

Much more Christmas fun was had at Gigi and Papa's as we went on a holiday train ride (complete with fake snow flying alongside of each car's windows), checked out neighborhood lights, and spent a morning constructing Lucie and Ryan's own gingerbread house scene. Lucie spent most of the time eating chocolate kisses, while Ryan constructed a multi-story marshmallow snowman he named "Giant". We were sure "Giant" would bite the dust at some point, but we propped him up with a graham cracker and lots of frosting, and Gigi says he's still standing to this day.


Unfortunately Tate was too sick at the beginning of the week to join us, though once he was feeling better, we paid him a visit for some always high-energy and fun cousin time. The kids raced around the house on scooters while Caleb looked on with delight. You'll be crashing into walls at high speed with them in no time, big guy.