Christmas Photos

Here are the first few Christmas photos. More to follow...

We are also very excited about the birth of Abby's two newest friends, Connor McDonald and Aashna Patel. Both born this week just in time to be tax babies :-)

Riding Horses

Abby got a riding pony for Christmas and she loves riding it!


Also... Abby has more pictures at her WalMart photo site. The password for first time users is "holiday". We put her new ones and all the old ones too, just in case there are some old photos that you wanted and we didn't give to you.

Abby's Secret Movie

We found this gem when we uploaded the videos - what cuties Jack and Abby are :-)

Abby Loves Jack

Abby always loves seeing her cousin Jack again. This time she even loved his pacifier, which is odd since she won't use her own.

Abby Opens Christmas Presents

Here is round one of this Christmas with Abby - opening presents at our home before we left for Hastings.

Making It Home

We made it home, and just in time based on the snow fall that started shortly after we arrived. All of Abby's new toys made it safely into the house and we have already put most of them away. We have lots of cool things to play with, and lots of great pictures from the last few days to share, but not right now. We have quite a few things to finish up before bed - like adding the new electric blanket (thanks Grandma Lorraine) to our bed :-)

Snowing, Going, But Hopefully No Blowing

We are getting ready to hit the road this afternoon, so we are hoping that there isn't any blowing snow. There is definitely going to be snow, so we are just hoping it stays in one place. Abby is all ready to leave for Hastings, but the rest of us aren't so ready.

I finished another baby afghan (that's 4 for this year) yesterday and have to take it to the post office and send it off to Baby Patel. We are all excited for her arrival and happy that Abby will have another dental school baby buddy. While finishing that afghan, Abby, Maize and I watch the pastor's daughters again yesterday. They are busy, busy little girls and we were all really tired last night. We did get some good laughs though, especially when the littler girl said to her big sister "let's pretend to be girls playing with dolls" while they were playing with Abby's baby dolls. It was too cute.

And now... back to packing. I need to find my Christmas Suit so Nate and I can look sharp for Christmas Eve. I haven't convinced Steve to participate in our tradition yet, but one of these days he'll do it, maybe.

Favorite Toy

Abby has a new favorite toy, and it didn't cost her dad and I a dime. Once upon a time, a long time ago, Abby's Grandma Mary bought me a Bitty Baby doll, since I had never had an American Girl doll before. So we put it away, and the other day we got it out for Abby to play with. She loves holding her baby and patting it on the head. The baby's eyes open and close when she moves. Abby even took her doll to church this morning, since it is one of her few non-noisy toys.

We are getting ready to come down state for Christmas. Abby's bags are packed, the gifts are all wrapped, and Maize says she is ready to go. Now all we need to do is pack a bag for Steve and I and make some yummy Christmas cookies to snack on. That and hope the snow doesn't strand us up here. We'll be keeping a close eye on the weather.

Army Crawl

From last Friday. This is Abby practicing her crawling. She is even better now!

Come On Ring Those Bells

Abby LOVES bells. Really loves them. She has a jingle bell and a traditional bell, so we get lots of "music". Enjoy!


We meant to put this up yesterday, but we had company and had a lot of cleaning and cooking going on. Abby hammed it up for our guests and was in general a crack up. She also had a little diaper disaster (aka blow out), so we decided she is going to have to start eating at least a little baby food, whether she likes it or not.