Today Ivy made her first move…forward that is.
Amazing strength!
The last week or so she’s been pushing up more and more until finally she can rock back and forth on her hands and knees.
Then while I was watching her practice this evening she moved a knee forward right before lunging face first toward the toy she was after. While not a full crawl yet she’s merely weeks…or days…away!
Friday night was a date night for us! Brian’s work was hosting their Christmas party at the Gaylord resort. So we dressed up, dropped the kids off at Brian’s grandparents and arrived early to enjoy the decorations and the time alone.
We enjoyed 1.5 million twinkling lights, 5,600 feet of garland, 2,300 wreaths, and 10,000 ornaments. There was an indoor river walk and miniature trains running all over the place.
I read online that there was a life size gingerbread house so we had to check it out. It had 35,000 M&M’s 1000 bricks of gingerbread and who knows how much frosting.
I liked the gingerbread people too 🙂
After enjoying an hour to ourselves we joined the party for some small talk and hors d’oeuvres before dinner started.
This is Brian’s boss, Adrian and his wife, Mikaela – they are originally from Romania and in talking with them I managed to remember one word in their language from my trip there four years ago.
And this is Perry, the CEO of Nexstar.
The end of our wonderful banquet – a beautiful dessert trio.
(Thanks to Sandy for some of the pictures).
…like daughter. Baby push-ups – working out for that next triathlon.
Getting ready for Christmas can be a daunting task – even Santa with all his magic needs the help of hundreds of elves. So this year I decided to employ a few elves myself. I knew the best ones are the small variety so I found two and hired them on.
Things started out very promising as we whipped up 30 small loaves of cranberry bread to be handed out with our newsletter.
Just as I was running out of counter space one little elf volunteered for dish duty – the only drawback to small helpers are small hands.
Little elves wear out quickly so while the smallest was recharging, I started the task of wrapping presents…what a stroke of luck to find that the older elf was an expert in wrappings and bows.
It seems this elf was also an expert in candy decorations for gingerbread houses.
Everything met with his approval and we were able to share some Christmas fun with our friends.
So if you find yourself stressed with everything there is to do, find an elf near you and liven up your holiday preparations! Or better yet, if you need to hire one or two out for a few hours, just let me know and arrangements can be made.
Brian got on a Mr. Fix-it roll Thursday night and everyone stayed up until 10:30 making several changes to our house. First he covered all the windows and glass door to insulate us from the cold.
Then he finished his dryer project – this allows warm, moist air to blow back into our house. Our place is very dry (we used a humidifier all last winter) and any extra heat is welcome so we’ll see how this works – at least on laundry days.
And finally, we rigged up a bunk bed of sorts for the kids. Ivy was getting too big for her bassinet so the kid’s room was overhauled once again. To get the crib up high enough for Lance to sit up underneath Brian had to add a few boards for stability.
Lance loved staying up and working with dad – he measured and marked, and watched in awe as Daddy cut (mommy held his ears). Ivy was mostly cheerful about staying up late if she was being held. Both kids and parents slept in the next morning.
