Edie and Mimi

Holiday Photo Dump #1

In an effort to be slightly more "present", I am taking less photos of every cute thing that happens in my life. This is not particularly beneficial to my blog, but I think I'm creating more memories that live in my brain, instead of the kind that live in my phone. Unfortunately, it means that our holiday season was a little under-documented. Ah well.

Here are the random photos from the last half of December. We visited Edie's old daycare and she had a blast playing with her old pal Julien (the son of her teacher) who is only 2 months older than her but about 10 inches and 20 pounds bigger:

This is the best picture ever of Edie wearing a squirrel mask. Do I need to elaborate? I don't think so.

Christmas at my parents' house. Edie and my Dad playing Connect Four (a Christmas present from us):

Dad and Jeff playing a funny golf game with Edie:

Jeff's 96 year old grandmother giving books out to all her great grand children at a family brunch:

My Mom and I sporting the adorable ear warmers that my sister in law knitted us!

We inherited some little Swedish wooden elf-like dolls from Jeff's grandmother last year. Jeff moved the little dolls around each night so Edie had to find them in the morning. Sort of our non-branded "Elf on a Shelf" experience - except Jeff had never heard of Elf on the Shelf… too bad he didn't have this idea like 5 years ago, because then maybe we could be super rich! I thought this move was particularly brilliant:

That elf is riding a tiny cast iron unicorn! What? Doesn't everyone have a fancy cast iron unicorn in their house? 

Lastly I have this picture of Mimi that I think should probably be entered into one of those caption contests. 

38

Jeff turned 38 with the New Year yesterday and Edie and I made him a chocolate cake. I used my favorite buttermilk chocolate cake recipe and then we tried a new frosting with mascarpone and Kahlua in it. Not too shabby:

Jeff got to sleep in until almost 11am, was given the gift of some Peace and Quiet while I took Edie to the gym with me in the afternoon, and then we went to Ray's Boathouse Cafe for fish and chips and crab cakes, followed by birthday cake at home before bed:

We are planning a weekend in Portland just the two of us as his real gift, which is the best kind because I benefit as well. Happy birthday old man - I hope this year brings you everything you wished for.

Santa

Edie didn't want to meet Santa this year. She wasn't scared, just disinterested. I was secretly disappointed, but tried to let it go. I have photos from pretty much every year of me on Santa's lap and I love those photos, as terrible as some of them are.

A few days before Christmas, we went to our neighborhood children's bookstore to buy a book for a family gift exchange and Santa happened to be there with a professional photographer. We were the only ones in the store, so there was no line and the photographer offered me a deal. Santa was super nice and read her a book she picked from the shelves and then chatted with her for like 10 minutes.  For this reason I forgave him his less traditional Santa-garb. She gave me all the photos on a CD, because it is apparently still 2006. Which is why it took me a week or two to get the photos on to my computer… So a little late, but here are some cute photos of the Eedster chilling with Santa:

Drumming with Kristin

Nutcracker

A few photos from our botched trip to see the Nutcracker. You'd never know it was going to go south so quickly from the photos:

Snow day!