Monsta Cucks!

Friends

The flight to Houston was delayed. And then delayed again, again and again, and by the end of it, we were 5.5 hours late, and arrived at Grandma Babe's house after 4am. Not a single whine from the kids over this - we have amazingly good travelers.

Houston was a long series of gatherings and parties. Kayla and Aunt Erin celebrated birthdays while we were there, there was a belated Christmas celebration, and of course New Years Eve. So it seemed to be an endless series of partying, presents, food and fun. All of the cousins had a great time together.



New Years Eve was celebrated with the Pasta family, and we left our camera behind, so you'll have to look for photographic evidence on their blog when Dave gets around to it.


Rachel started to ask "Why?". She says it a lot.

Now, you might be a redneck....if you take your extended family to a Monster Truck rally as a Christmas gift.

Yes, it's true - on Saturday before coming home, we took the cousins, aunt, Babe and the Pastas to see "Monster Truck Jam" with 75,000 of our closest friends at Reliant stadium.

And it was a great time. Daniel was so enthralled that he just about forgot to breathe for 4 hours, and the next morning, Eric had to lay down on the floor and pretend to be the cars that "Taz" the monster truck smashed.

He was concerned though -> "Won't people be sad when their cars get crunched?"

It was a bit loud for Rachel even with earplugs, and so she had to be calmed down and as you can see in the background, she slept through some of the show.

And that's about it for our Houston adventure. We had a good stay, and in just a couple of weeks, Grandma Babe will be up in Denver for Rachel's 2nd birthday.

Until next time.

Love, ADRE

Christmas Chaos

Friends

So we'd been back from Thailand for a few days - mostly enough to eliminate Jet Lag in all of but Rachel, when we went to a pre-Christmas party held by the neighbor of a friend. It turned out to be a great time - Santa showed up, sang some songs, told some stories and then had time for all of the kids. Daniel had the routine pretty much figured out, but was a little more bashful with Santa than his parents (where he had his wishlist down to a well-rehearsed litany).

Rachel wasn't so sure about this guy in the red suit, but since all of the other kids had talked to him, she did too. When Santa asked her what she wanted, she didn't hesitate: "Peasants!" (presents) is what she asked for.

We had a planned trip to Steamboat Springs for a long weekendd before Christmas but with the delay in Thailand, we cut that down to 2 days. It was cold, but good fun. We brought sleds (fun, but brief) and went for a dinner sleighride. Rachel slept through the whole ride, which was a shame.

As for skiing - Daniel wasn't too excited about it, so we spent some time watching the other kids in ski school. By the end of it, he seemed interested, so we might try to get him into a lesson before the end of the season.

Christmas morning, both kids were in fine shape to open presents. Daniel got the skid-steer loader he'd been eyeing for a while, and along with the Pirate ship and Diego gifts (camera and legos), those were the big hits.

Rachel got a bunny doll, some legos to call her own (though Daniel decided he needed to show her how to play with them) and an easel (a joint gift, but Rachel got more excited about it) to play with.

And since it was cold and generally disagreeable outside, having plenty of new toys to play with and books to read was a good thing. In the days after Christmas, we took the light rail downtown to explore, went swimming at the local recreation center, went to the zoo and saw the zoolights with friends and generally got ourselves ready to go to Houston for New Years. (see next posting, which it's time to write now)

Love. A.D.R.E.