A walk at the marsh

Whenever we are up visiting in Arcata, we all try to get out and do some type of family outing. This year, like last year, we went on a nice long walk at the Arcata Marsh. It was a beautiful day- cloudy with rain threatening to start falling at any time (and in fact did start to fall at the end). Once again, these pictures are courtesy of Nick.

Christmas 2009

Erik's artistic representation of our Christmas Tree-
Jonah dressed of the holidays-

Winter break started for me on December 18th at 1:30 pm. We were on the road to Humboldt by 2:00 pm. We broke the trip up in two, stopping in Livermore at a hotel overnight. Early the next morning we were back on the road and made good time getting home. Having nearly a week in Arcata before Christmas gave us lots of time to visit with family and do last minute preparations.

Grandma and Grandpa Tipple came up to Arcata for a visit-

Cairo kept busy and Erik and I got this ready for Christmas. She took lots of pictures, including this self portrait...

... and she helped her daddy and Uncle Alvin work on the car headlights.
A few days before Christmas, the whole family came over and Kyoko gave us lessons in making paper snowflakes for the Christmas Tree. We all had a lot of fun creating different snowflakes, though Kyoko's were far superior to any that we made... except, maybe, for Nick's big-butted snowman snowflake. :o)

One of Kyoko's amazing snowfalkes-

I think that this is one that I made-

Snowflakes on the Christmas Tree-


Cairo and Mei posing in front of the tree-
This year new traditions were in the making. In years past, Christmas Eve was spent at Grandma Dedini's house with the extended family. With Grandma's passing, everyone branched out and did their own independent and smaller-scale celebrations. So, for this Christmas Eve we celebrated the evening with Erik's parents and Nick's family in the new family room at Erik's parent's house. We has a great dinner, opened a few presents, and enjoyed the atmosphere and warmth of the new family room. Though the evening was nice, the change of tradition will take some time getting used to. (Since I forgot my camera battery charger in Monrovia and my battery was almost dead, most of these pictures are courtesy of Nick.)



Christmas morning this year was a little more exciting than the past few. The magic feeling that came with Christmas when I was little, which has slowly tapered off as I have grown older, has started to sparkle back now that I have kids. Cairo was excited about presents, excited (and then not) about Santa Claus coming, and enthusiastic about everything that has to do with the holidays. Cairo and I started the morning by sneaking out to the Living Room together. When we got out there she was more than trilled to see a pile of present and a play kitchen waiting for her. As was tradition for me when I grew up, the first thing we opened was our stockings.
Erik's parents and brother's family came over for breakfast. Erik whipped up a yummy breakfast casserole, homemade apple bread pudding (made from apples from our tree), and a blueberry, yogurt cornmeal bread. It was fantastic! When it came time to open presents on Christmas morning, Cairo was tearing through the wrapping paper before we even realized what was going on. A side from one of my presents, the only ones in reach were hers. She was in an opening frenzy. She had her back to everyone in the room, quickly tore paper from one present after another, of course making sure that she pulled off the ribbons, bows, and name tags first (so that we can save them for next year). Jonah didn't make it very far through opening presents. In fact, he slept through just about all of it and Erik ended up opening all of his presents.

Cairo diligently working to unwrap her presents-

Mei and her new baby doll-Erik and his parents-

The one present Jonah helped lick and open before he fell asleep. Notice the face on the present smiling at you? Who did that cute wrapping job? Why, Auntie Kyoko, of course!Christmas Chaos-
Later that afternoon we headed down to Ferndale to enjoy Christmas dinner with the Tipple Family. We all crowded around the dinner table and stuffed ourselves with a table full of great food. We exchanged a few more presents and just when it was time for some dessert, both Cairo and Jonah completely fell apart. So, Grandma Tipple packed up some some Pumpkin pie to-go, we packed the kids back into the car and headed home. It has been a long and overstimulating day for not only the kids, but for Erik and I as well. The kids were down and asleep by 7, and I wasn't too far behind!


This Christmas has been full of discovery for Cairo- she has finally discovered Santa, candy canes (her first taste of candy, which she sucked on for hours), the joy of tearing through presents... and even better, what's under the wrapping, decorating the Christmas tree, Christmas stories, Christmas cookies, and wrapping presents on her own. On the other hand, Jonah just wanted to stare at the Christmas lights (blink, blink) and lick his presents. He did find ribbon rather fun, but was only allowed to roll around and play with it while being closely supervised. And so, another Christmas has passed and a new year approaches. This year has brought me so much to celebrate. I wonder what next year will bring....

Christmas in Monrovia

To get in the holiday spirit, Cairo opened a flap of the Advent calendar each day and put the paper ornament on the pop-up tree. (Ba-chan gave Cairo the neat neat 3-D Advent calendar when we were up north for Thanksgiving.)

Before we headed back to Humboldt for Christmas, we celebrated the occasion with my family. My mom cooked a yummy meal and Heather, Paul, Xander, and Danny joined us for dinner and presents. Jonah was more interested in licking the presents than rattling the paper or playing with his new things.
Cairo, on the other hand, dug into her presents like they would disappear is she didn't tear the wrapping paper off of them fast enough. She seemed more excited about the unwrapping than the actual present. In fact, she was unwrapping them so fast I could hardly keep up with what she was getting and who she was getting them from. So, Cairo tore the wrapping off of present...
... after present...

...after present.In the end, though, she slowed down and took inventory of all the fun new things she got. Like a pretty new apron from Me-me...
...and a baby potty from Grammy.
Cairo also got a neat portable DVD player from Uncle Danny. Since Cairo has recently become interested in movies- like the "doggy movie with spots" (101 Dalmatians), not to be confused with the "doggy" or "Sienna movie" (Lady and the Tramp)- it makes it especially easy to entertain her.
At this point the presents Cairo has used the most are the two Disney storybooks Auntie Heather and Uncle Paul gave her. Each day since then we read Cairo several stories from the books and she keeps pulling it out for another.

X and the dogs

Xander loves Sienna and Guinness. Even though the dogs are big, pushy, and outweigh him by quite a bit, that doesn't stop him from plopping himself on the floor right in between them to enjoy their fluffy, flurry of activity.

"Hi Dogs! Love me!"-

"What are you doing Sienna? Eating?"-

"I love you!" -

"Oh, look! Guinness is out of food."-

"Oh, poor doggies. You must be hungry."-

"Here let me feed you some more"-

"Here you go."-

"Oh, you need some more. Okay, I'll get more... and maybe have a snack myself." :o)