Holidays in Illinois 2009

Our 17 day trip was a lot of fun!  Here are some highlights ...

Dec 21: We spent the first day at the Wicklows after arriving really late the night before.  My wish for snow came true on day one!  Cameron and Reagan built a snowman and snowdog.

Dec 22: At the Reeves, Ryan and Cantor share toys well; narrowly gouge other's eyes out

Dec 22-26: Reagan and Faire had fun copying each other, us, etc

Dec 25: After rain melted all the previous snow, we got dumped on with 8.5 inches!  Wish thoroughly fulfilled!  The slope in Gma Laurie/Gpa Martin's backyard was perfect sledding for the kids too.

Dec 23: Ryan and Great Grandpa Andrew sharing the head of the table during lunch at Panache

Dec 25:  Christmas lunch at the Wicklows; Gpa Don, Cam, & Reagan check out all the goodies from Santa

Dec 30: A fun night out at Monical's Pizza - totally forgot how much I loved their food - along with Heidi and Hanna.  "We're crazy sticker face girls, give us some candy!"

Dec 31: Last meal out with Gma Connie/Gpa Don before heading to Chicago for New Year's

Dec 31 - Jan 5: At Rikki/Chris', we celebrated New Year's, played Rock Band, and lazed around

Jan 3: Ryan's two breakfast dates, first Maggie, then Lucy.

Jan 5: We arrived back home to find that Santa left Reagan a barbie house!

Xmas Cookies

We made a batch of frosted sugar cookies, holiday shaped cookie cutters, the whole 9 yards.  It was pretty fun.  They turned out cute!

Deep concentration ... intricate work

All the finished cookies, Reagan's proud of us all!

Reagan's masterpieces (other than the outfit on the gingerbread man and some of the face on the snowman, these were all her!)

Halloween 2009

Carved pumpkins (Note To Self:  do not carve pumpkins a week ahead since you do not live in a cold climate anymore.  They turn into white, fuzzy liquid by Halloween night)

Cinderella, Gus the Mouse and the Fairy Godmother

Cinderella makes Blueberry Pancakes

Reagan likes her costume so much that she wears it for everything.

Christmas Tree Time

We got our tree on December 15th, I'm just finally blogging about it. It's really nothing special to blog about cause every year (well, only the ones that we've been in town) we go to the Rite Aid 10 minutes away and select a tree from their small pile of look-alikes and then come home and put the most standard basic things on it ... colorful ball ornaments and white lights. Boom, done!

Reagan did a great job hanging ornaments this year and only broke one in the process. Oh, we also had the chocolate ornaments from Augie to add this year and she only talked about eating them 20 million times for the first couple days and hasn't said a word since. This picture reminds me a lot of a picture of myself when I was about this age, reaching toward a christmas tree like this with short curly hair in a white turtleneck ... maybe we don't look alike, it's just all the other coincidences :-) Adding this pic just to document my 6.75 months (29 weeks) preggo belly.