Christmas Day

After opening gifts, we drove to Palo Alto for Christmas dinner to spend the rest of the day with J-P's family.

All the cousins together. Oliver is not happy as the portrayed face reveals. Mable apparently has established the pecking order and Oliver falls below her unfortunately. She took his cars away.

Oliver is potty trained, however not when it comes to his car seat. He peed his pants over the two hour car ride, hence the missing lower half. Fortunately for Oliver, he can get away with the no pants with socks and shoes look. For me, this picture is one of my finest!

Kid table, NO ADULTS ALLOWED!

Our Holly Home Christmas morning!

Ilene and Morgan graced us with their jovial presence and joined in the spirit of giving and receiving! Oliver (Calvin too) received a Batman shirt from the newlyweds! Thanks guys for all the fantastic gifts! You spoiled us like usual!

Oliver on his new ride! We bought this retro Radio Flyer bike in Oregon while we were visiting there for the Thanksgiving Holiday. He rode it in the store, we bought it and then stowed it away in the shed after returning home for safe keeping until Christmas. I was thinking we could get away with saying it was from Santa until one day...... I heard the boys in the next room talking about their bikes. It goes something like this; "Oliver, let's go ride our bikes," Calvin says "I can't Calvin, my bike is hiding in the shed," Oliver confesses in his sweet two year old voice. I couldn't believe my ears! He's two, he's not suppose to have a better memory than me! Santa has got to get smarter!

Christmas Eve

These are out of order, but this picture was taken just hours before Santa and his reindeer arrived on our roof top! I'm sure you can tell by their wide eyes how excited they were! They are also dawning their new action figure pajamas. It is tradition in J-P's family(now ours) to open one gift before bed and it's always new Christmas pajamas!

We spent Christmas Eve over at J-P's sister and brother-in-laws house.

Thanks guys for the wonderful dinner and evening together!

We ate borscht, you know..... beet soup! It's also tradition in J-P's family to have a Polish dinner on Christmas Eve. J-P's Mom's side is all Polish. No pollock jokes please!(We've heard them all)

This is perrogi, basically dumplings with potatoes and cheese inside. They also come in different varieties, like sour kraut, meat and numerous other combinations.

I brought the dessert.....not my favorite. I tried an experiment and put a pumpkin filling in a chocolate crust. The two combined ingredients canceled out each of the flavors. Won't try that again.

Cousins in the kitchen!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAN!

We love you Dan. Wish we could celebrate with you.

SoCal

We went to Southern California for the weekend. I had a business convention to attend in Anaheim for 3 days so we went down as a family. Christi and the kids got to spend that time with our good friends Annie and Brandon on LA.

On Saturday they went to the Santa Monica pier for some rides and fun.

Annie and Brandon we love you guys.

The co-writers

These guys had a blast in the bumper cars. Oliver really just waited to get hit but Calvin finally figured out how to drive it and decided that his goal was to avoid everything.

He says that next time he won't hit anything and he'll be just like Daddy.

The boys love hanging out with their friends.

The trip was awesome! My convention was incredible and as always we loved spending time with our friends.

Thanksgiving in Oregon

This Thanksgiving we spent in Oregon with my family.
We got together with both of my sisters and their families.

On the trip we stopped off at a couple of different sights.
The boys enjoyed the covered wagons.

Christi thought that she was on Little House On The Prairie

We were able to get our Christmas tree this year in Oregon. We had to carry it on top of the go-cart on top of the car.

The boys spotted this old chopper at one of our gas stops. This thing was actually going to be refurbished and sent back into commision fighting fires again.

We got to see our good friends Leighton and Shauna's new house that they have been building.

Calvin and Oliver with cousins Mable and Claire. They love their cousins.

There was a parade in downtown McMinnville on Friday.

Yes they did get to see Santa and that was a very big deal.

Dad and Jeanette

The boys love their grandpa too. Lap time is priceless.

Can you beat hay rides? Really come on there isn't much better.