Holidaze Recap

We had a fantastic holiday season, so great that we couldn't even manage to fire up the laptops to document it on the blog. So here is a bit of a belated rundown.

First off, we traveled to Oregon for Thanksgiving, and in the span of just a few days managed to eat a big turkey dinner (of course), visit the Portland Zoo, see Kellie and family, go wine tasting (or go "designated driving" in my case), and sleep and eat a ton. Somehow we managed to take virtually no pictures of the trip, so you'll just have to trust me that we did all of those things. The highlight for Sonia was definitely seeing the baby elephant at the zoo (including watching him get knocked down twice while rough housing with one of his playmates). That helped soften the memory of being absolutely terrified by the chimpanzees and the sea lion, both of whom were eager to come right up to the glass to see us up close. Apparently the fact that the glass prevents the animals from actually reaching you is a learned insight.

After Thanksgiving, we mostly laid low until Christmas came about. Given that I was effectively grounded from air travel at this point, Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Kevin came to us to celebrate Christmas for the first time in our new house. Sonia was very fired up about the Christmas tree and rearranged the ornaments daily. She also, of course, was very interested in the notion of receiving presents, and definitely the threat that "Santa won't bring you something if you are not a nice girl," was trotted out often to great effect. On Christmas Eve, we went to Tracy and celebrated early with Dada and Bebe by eating too much food (a definite trend in general). On Christmas morning, the extent of over-purchasing of presents for Sonia was clear, and she was literally overwhelmed by the haul of gifts. I have vowed (and someone remind me of this next year) to tone it down a bit, but it was still fun to see her so excited. Sonia was very happy that Santa ate all of the cookies she made for him, and somehow this experience has made her like cookies in general (going against her prior dislike of desserts in general), which no doubt we will regret. Sameer received the Nintendo Wii for Christmas, including the Wii Fit and Tiger Woods Golf. This made for some humorous time around the house, including Sameer receiving his "Wii Fit Age" estimate of 45, which only the rest of us found amusing. (Note: subsequent practicing and testing reduced this estimate to 37, and Sameer is citing his superior muscle mass as the source of his elevated BMI).

After Christmas, we had a very lazy week as we tried to tackle some of the to-do's in anticipation of baby #2. This mostly involved going through Sonia's old clothes (90% pink, 99% girly, and in general not that helpful), gear, toys, etc. In the process, it now looks like a bomb went off in our garage, but we are labeling this "progress." At this point, I think we are reasonably ready set-up wise, and if only we were so ready mentally. We "celebrated" New Years by staying home and watching a movie OnDemand, and ringing in the new year sober led to my resolution for 2010 to drink more (or at least some). :-)

The final holiday we celebrated was Sameer's birthday on January 3rd. The occasion was an opportunity for Sonia to learn that "Mommy is older than Daddy," which she has repeated endlessly since then. Sonia asserted that Sameer wanted "chocolate cupcakes with blue frosting" that we made at home (given her success with Santa's cookies), so that is what we had. The whole family came to our house to celebrate (and receive their Wii Fit Ages, of course) which was a great and relaxing way to spend one of the last days of our holiday break.

Now we are of course back in the grind of work, school, and everything else, so the holidays are already feeling like a distant memory. Due date for kid #2 is a month from today (!), so we are now in the final countdown to when our lives get turned upside down for a little while. May we manage to remember the holidays when we were so well rested!

Below are some photos from the last few months (warning: if you are upset by images of parents corrupted by commercialization, please view at your own risk).