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.