Christmas 2008

Okay, so I'm a few days late - but here is the wonderful Christmas 2008 post!

To begin, we already had the big family Thanksgiving / Christmas celebration with Stacy's mom's family, so we now move onto last Tuesday evening, December 23rd...

We went over to Stacy's mom and step dad's house, and had a small get-together that was just for the five of us.

We had a good meal, and then it was time for presents.



It didn't take Sophie long to figure out the whole presents thing. She had previous experience both on her birthday, and at thanksgiving, but that was just a warm up for the next few days...



Sophie got a lot of nice gifts from Deb and Duane, and was especially thrilled with the last present, a sled!



Duane and I pulled her across the carpet several times (until we got tired) - she loved it.



It didn't take long for her to figure out just how much stuff she could get into her sled, so that she could drag it around herself...



We had a nice evening, and then went home so I could get sleep before work the next morning...

On Wednesday (December 24th - Christmas Eve) - I had to work a half day, and then we hopped in the van with my sister Allison, and I drove us all up to Aitkin (so close to the edge of the Earth you can see the dragons lurking) to see my mom and step-dad.

Again, we had a good meal, and then it was off to the presents! But first, Stacy and Allison took Sophie upstairs so that we could pretend the Santa had come with presents (the tree was pretty bare when we first got there.)

One of Sophie's first gifts was some dress-up stuff - a crown and earrings...




Now would be a good time to mention Sophie's unwrapping style. She tears a small piece off, then must give it to someone or set it carefully on the floor before tearing again. We had to keep egging her on to get her to get the paper off in any reasonable length of time - it was pretty funny.



Sophie got a nice porcelain doll with a music box, a "Moses basket" with stand, and a whole bunch of play kitchen stuff (to go with our big gift for her - the Rose Petal Cottage - see more on that below)

We left around 8PM, and headed home so that we could try and get Sophie's gifts from us all ready before Christmas morning.

Well, it took a lot longer than we thought it would to wrap all of Sophie's gifts and set up her play room withe the cottage and fort. We got to bed about 1:00 AM, and had to get up at a decent time so that we'd have time for our Christmas, as well as for me to make the meatballs for the Ziegler family celebration on Christmas afternoon.

We finally got out of bed around 8:45, and went downstairs to see what Santa brought Sophie this time!

By now, Sophie knew what presents were, and knew they were for her. She wasted very little time in digging in...

From us Sophie got an easel, a guitar, a Geo-Trax train set, a couple of kids games that we can play with her, and a mini mixer for her kitchen - which she had yet to see...

Which we set up down in her playroom...

The cottage is taller than she is, so it fits perfectly. She love playing house with us with all of her new stuff...

We also got her this modular fort from the people who make the Cranium games. It's kinda like the old putting blankets over living room furniture style, but modernized. She loves playing peek-a-boo in here.

All of this fun took us until after 11 AM, which put me wayyyyy behind on the meatball making.

Stacy gave Sophie a bath, and I cooked like mad. We were able to arrive at my step-sister's house only 30 minutes late.

We ate, and then came the presents, which were heavily focused on Sophie and her cousins Maddie and Jake...

Sophie got a set of twins, with a stroller and rocking seat, as well as some more play food and some bigger girl Legos (Duplo now, not the super big mega-blox).

Needless to say, she was very happy to get even more babies...

Here's Madison, Becky, Sophie, Steve, and Jake, posing together

Sophie also got some CDs, and the "Horton Hears a Who" DVD - so now we have a new movie to put into the van and listen too 500 times :)

Sophie has been working on playing catch with me and Stacy, and she needed to try some more playing with Grandpa...

We got home late in the afternoon, and crashed for basically the rest of the weekend...

Now we are a little more than a day away from the new year. 200i8 went by really fast!

I'm still working on the China DVD, but it will take some more time - there's a lot to do to make it coherent.

That's all for now - see you next year!

Larry

More Pictures Before Christmas

Well, things are getting crazy, what with Christmas coming up on us at light speed and me starting a new contracting job, so here's some more pictures from the last few weeks to get you through until right around the end of the month...

Her toy bag makes an excellent helmet...



Sophie LOVES pockets!



Playing Rock Band and eating prunes (prumes) - I don't think life could get much better for her...



It's fun to get the lint off of the couch...



Coloring on mommy...

Helping bring the dirty clothes downstairs...

And then helping us fold and hang the clean clothes up...

Visiting her new friend Baby Knox...

That's it for now, time for bed!

Larry

Trimming The Tree

Last night while I was doing a bunch of grocery shopping, Sophie helped Stacy get our small tree set up and trimmed.

As I wasn't present, I'll skip any commentary, but here are some great pictures that Stacy took:

Sophie's First Thanksgiving!

We survived Sophie's first Thanksgiving!

We drove out to Dawson, MN last weekend- where Stacy's mother's side of the family gathers for holidays - and had a combined Thanksgiving / Christmas.

Here is Stacy, her Grandmother Velva, Mother Deb, and the Sophinator...



Sophie is a weird kid - she makes going to bed a pretty unfun affair (like most kids her age) - but one of the games she has made up we call "Nie Nie" (short for "night night"). She'll lay on the couch or in this case, on a bed, and pat the pillow and ask us to go "Nie Nie" with her. Then you spend the next ten minutes playing modified peek-a-boo with her as she will wrap you in a blanket, and close her eyes, then try to catch you with your eyes open...



To save travel for the whole family, we combined Christmas and Thanksgiving into one event this year (finally) and Sophie got a lot of stuff that she loved, including two Cabbage Patch Kids, two Care Bears, and a new play cell phone.

Mommy helped her to unwrap the gifts, but already she's getting the hang of it...

It was a good holiday, until we went shopping...

We didn't do any early morning madness this year (what was there that was such a good deal? We couldn't find anything), but did drive into Watertown, SD to do some afternoon / evening shopping.

Sophie didn't want to be in any carts, and started throwing tantrums in every store. That meant that either Stacy or I had to take her out of the store and into the van right away and wait for the other person to get finished shopping.

Not exactly fun or relaxing.

It's been a while since I've had a chance to take a picture of Sophie at her most innocent (actually we may have been in China for the last one) - but We woke up Friday morning, and Sophie was dead to the world; flash photography, as well as the both of us talking at a normal level in the same room, didn't wake her up...

Normally she has over a dozen stuffed animals in bed with her (seriously) but for travel purposes, we whittled it down a little bit...

That's all for tonight - I've got more pictures queued up for the next post, hopefully tomorrow...

Larry

Halloween 2008

I'm only two weeks late on this one - I'm getting better, I think...

So, two weeks ago - October 31, 2008, was Sophie's first Halloween!

Since we aren't pagan Satan-worshippers, we celebrated the lighter, more social aspects of one of the few American holidays that can be spoken above a whisper. We dressed Sophie up as a beautiful rendition of Sleeping Beauty (the redundancy is intentional) and started the day's festivities at my work.

As Halloween can still be mentioned in the workplace in our beloved state, it is celebrated all day at Allianz. Teams are encouraged to decorate their areas, and in the afternoon kids are allowed in to trick or treat through the cubicles.

Our theme this year was penguins / the Antarctic - which tied into a big sales initiative from earlier in the year, so we scored some big points with the muckity-mucks. It also had the benefit of not being scary, which was the approach last year - we wanted to lighten things up a little bit.

Stacy and Sophie came about 2:00 in the afternoon, and Sophie instantly took to the glasses we made up for our "costumes" as Rock-hopper penguins.



As you can see, once she warmed up, Sophie was her usual hammy self :)



Afterward, we went to our church's pumpkin party, which is a safe alternative for families to go to to get candy and have fun without partaking in some of the other trappings of Halloween. It's a very positive thing.

Here's Stacy and Sophie in the parking lot before we went in. Again, notice how despondent Sophie is...



One of the neat things about the pumpkin party at church is that they bring in a christian magician who not only plays well to the kids, but also ties in his tricks with teaching from the Bible.



Sophie hasn't had much candy at all (and we'll keep it that way as long as we can - now if we could just reduce our own candy intake...) but she did gnaw on a sucker during the show.



The room where the show was held is called the Video Cafe. It's a more relaxed atmosphere with tables and chairs that also has screens for people to watch and participate in services.


We were sitting in a raised section of the room, and there was a ramp leading up to it. About midway through the show, Sophie wanted to walk around a little, so I took some pictures (we didn't have much of her in the dress otherwise).

This is an adjusted picture that was taken in the dark, so the colors aren't quite right, but you can see her beauty clearly...

Sophie is already a flirt (in that she know how to through her smile and charm around, and she likes), and while she was walking around, she decided to schmooze with some "older men." She is going to be trouble in a dozen years (or several dozen if I have my way - no dating until 40)

The carnival in the gym was definitely the highlight of the party.

We met many friends who and their kids, and here, representing the Wizard of Oz, are Chris and Jen, and their kids Emma and Andrew. Emma and Sophie get along great, and Emma is a sweetheart. Though I don't have a picture of it, went down the slide a few time together holding hands, it was really nest to see. Hopefully Jen's attempt to capture that were successful...

This inflatable slide was the best thing in the world, as far as Sophie was concerned. She was cautious on the first run down, but was hooked after that.

We went down the slide a half dozen times before the magic show, and at least two dozen times after.

And every time, I had to carry her up the 20 foot long ramp going up. By the end of the night I was exhausted!

Here's a montage of her coming down the slide - she liked sliding down both backward on her stomach and forward on her butt.

Good times were had by all, especially Sophie, so it was a successful evening!

Sophie's been learning many more words, and is getting better with object and color recognition. It's really neat to see her trying to learn, and wanting us to tell her what things are so she can find out what things are. Some of her favorite words now are: "Moom" (Moon), "Proom," (Prune - she loves them,, and they have been essential in curing a major bout of constipation last week), "Pool" of course, and she has started saying "Wuv You" when we tell her "I Love You" - which is just the best thing in the world, next to her hugs.

Sophie is also getting much better at using "please" when she wants something - we're steering her away from the "My" / "Mine" that she started using a little while ago. When she says please it's pretty cute too - she puts a lot of energy into it.

That's all for now, talk to everybody again soon!

Larry