Santa Baby

On Saturday we had a really fun, albeit short, visit to the landscape arboretum for some holiday fun with "the troup" - Wally, Colin, and Ryder.  When we walked in, there was a handbell choir playing christmas tunes to a full audience in the hallway, and Wally kept giving his "more" sign every time the song ended!  I think he really liked listening to the handbells!  The boys all got thier pictures taken with Santa.  This was a good lookin' Santa complete with real beard, which Wally was entranced by.  He was giggling and smiling the whole time he was on Santa's lap.  Colin, not so much.  Ryder, rather indifferent.  It was so fun to see the boys together too!  I really can't wait for them to get a little older and be able to play togehter.  Maybe some day I will regret saying that, but for now I can hang on to my dreams of sweet little play dates.  I was bummed to have to cut the day short so that we could get home for Brian to do some emergency work that popped up late Friday afternoon.

Wally Loves the Beard!  Ohhh, and glasses too!

 Ryder is looking good with his new booties!

 Colin is planning his escape rout

 Here's lookin' at you

 That gingerbread house looks just unstable enough to fall 

over when I pull on the candy cane.  Let's try it!

Family photo in front of the fire place

First Field Trip: Children's Museum

This year has been filled with so many "firsts" that I feel like I haven't stopped to celebrate as many of them as I should.  First teeth were huge for me because they took sooooooo long in coming.  Now they are Wally's defining feature in my mind.  I'm not going to recognize him when that bottom row fills in.

Anyhoo - on Thursday we had a really fun first field trip.  We joined the Mound ECC on a trip to the Children's Museum in downtown St. Paul.  Complete with bus ride!  I was a little nervous about that, but I ended up with some awesome cuddle time.  On both the bus ride out and back, Wally snuggled in and put his head on my shoulder and just slept.  In 6 months when he drops that morning nap, I will remember that bus ride!

I think we are going to have to be regular visitors at the children's museum.  What a fun place!  They have some of the most creative things to do.  They even had a whole room just for younger children like Wally.  There was a little frog pond, a meadow to "pick" flowers, tunnels and slides, and lots of stuffed animal puppets.  He had a blast crawling around and watching the older kids climb and play!  Our friends T and P joined us, and it made for an exciting morning!

Wally loved the slide in this little rock cave area

 Wally and P playing with gears on a large magnet board

 Hmmm, what could these cryptic symbols mean!  They are everywhere!

 Hiding in the radishes

 Mesmerized by a world under the glass.  If only I could touch it...

Mid December Update

Hey, it's already December 12th!  Just wanted to put a quick little update on the blog here and some cute pics I've taken this month.   These first few are from a visit on the first weekend of Dec by our good friends R and J, and thier daughter V (not sure if they want me to post names :)  Wally is about 8 weeks younger than V but stands a good 2 inches taller than her!

Wally and V playing together inside his little pop-up house.

 Wally tries on V's birthday present - a hair bow!

V profile

I think Dec and May are always our most busy months.  I love having more opportunities to see people we don't get to see very often, but by Mondays I'm ready for a vacation! So, in true fashion, we were running around a lot this past weekend.  Wally got to spend lots of quality time at Grandparents John's on Saturday and Sunday which was really nice.  I had a rehearsal all morning Saturday for our annual choir cantata Sunday at St. Luke.  We performed the Pinkham Christmas Cantata, which is a pretty advanced piece of music for the choir.  The performance on Sunday went really well.  Our director was able to hire a brass quartet (2 trumpets, 2 trombones) out of the U of M's doctorol students.  They were just amazing, and really made the piece pop!  My student S also played with me - she took the "pedal" notes on our keyboard since we don't have an organ

On Saturday night was the annual "Mystery Beer Night" with Brian's Maplewood group.  This year was much more tame than I remember past years being....We must be getting old!  We were out by 10pm.

Wally has been doing so much lately.  He loves to walk while holding on to your pinkies, so I'm sure he'll be taking a few steps by Xmas.  He is really active and curious about everything.  Sometimes he has me pick him up and just starts pointing to things that he wants to touch and feel.  Of course most of them are things I wouldn't give him (scissors, toilet bowl cleaner, Hazel's tail) but he's really starting to figure out how things work.  Very Fun!

 Wally and BFF Colton

  Xmas tree at Grandarents John's house

Rock Strand Family Thanksgiving

We had a very nice Thanksgiving this year.  What was so great about it was that we didn't have any one day where we traveled between two families. The John Family had Thanksgiving on the Saturday before, the Rock family on Thanksgiving day, and the Hall family the Saturday after. In the past we used to do up to three family events in one day.  It's amazing how much more carefully you evaluate your travel plans when you have a kid!  Even two events in a day is pushing it with driving, nap schedules, bedtime, and stimulation levels.

I've been trying to get lots of photos of Wally with his family.  This was my attempt at staging a pic with Wally, Dad and Mary.  I was trying to get him to smile but the best I could get was this "angelic contemplation." Also got a whole series of cute shots of him with my dad, here's a sample.

Anyway, it was really nice to see everyone and be able to spend some time with our family.  This year it's been tough to get everyone together with all these babies, work schedules, and such. Wally got lots of kisses from Callie - Drew and Carolyn's golden retriever who is a pretty and sweet dog. For a golden puppy she's also very well behaved, and it was fun to play with her.  Since it was a beautiful afternoon, I tried to get a few "woodsy outdoor" shots of Callie but for some reason she wasn't following my directions to "sit still" and "now take two steps forward."  So I got what I got.  Good practice for when Wally's running.

It was a really good turn-out, with Grandpa Rock making the trip from Anoka to Lake Elmo.  Since his heart surgery this past summer, it's been hit or miss for him to travel.  Got a great shot here of him with Granny and Jesse during our prayer.  Also, a classic Jesse pose with a cracker sticking out of his mouth.  Sexy.

The food, as usual, was excellent.  Drew made a wonderful dressing with cranberries and sausage - note to self to ask for the recipe.  I brought sweet potatoes.  Wonderful cheese spread for appetizers, and a new salad with dinner.  Granny's pecan pies were exceptionally tasty this year, but I only got one piece in before we had to hit the road. Lot's of other stuff too.

Cute pic of Callie and Drew in the Background here.

And a nice family shot of Andy, Kacy, and Colin.  I had this really great shot where Colin was looking at the camera too, but it was completely out of focus.  grrr.... any tips on how to prevent that with my nifty fifty lens is greatly appreciated!

Playing Catch-up

Well faithful blog follower (s), my early new-years resolution is to play catch-up and post some really fun pics I've gathered over the past month. And then to actually post regular updates.  Keep tuned for massive activity on this site! (A tall order for someone who by nature is a procrastonator and hates consistency.  But - After importing all 851 pictures off my camera this morning, I think I have more than enough material!)

So, here are a few shots I took of Wally last week while he was playing with a new set of blocks I bought him with my "Once Upon a Child" coupon.  That store, by the way, is like Walmart. You hate going in there, but the deals are just too good.  We've been having a blast with these blocks.  We bang them together, Mom builds towers and Wally knocks them down, we pick them up off the windowseat and throw them onto the floor.  Dad spells inapropriate words with them. Who knew you could do so much with a cube?

 This one is my favorite.  The face is such a classic. "Mom, come give me attention"

 What's that in my left hand?  Oh, your lens cap.  Well, we'll just have to find a good hiding place for that.

 Wally, you can spell!

This one is so sweet.  Papa and Wally!

John Family Thanksgiving

Wally's first Thanksgiving was last weekend (before the Thanksgiving date). It was a really nice weekend with Mariel and Jeff in town. On Friday Brian took the day off, so we hung out as a family and went to our ECFE play time together. It was cute that Brian was the only Dad there but still played with all the kids. We celebrated Jeff's birthday Friday night. I made a carrot cake, which failed miserably. Note to self…spring form pan doesn't work with cake batter. So I made a cheesecake instead, which turned out really well. We had to leave it with Fred and Kath otherwise I surely would have eaten the whole thing this week.

On Saturday we celebrated Thanksgiving. We got some really cute family shots near the window upstairs, which are on the right. Wally was especially cute and giggly the whole day. That night though he was up every 2 hours. Blah. But we still had a really nice day playing games and eating Kath's wonderful cooking!

Sunday Wally came with me to church and then to MacPhail for the APPI Showcase recital, where my student Bella played a beautiful piece by Valerie Roth Robous and I played a Scriabin Etude. She played it so musically, I was really proud of her!

More to come in the next few days with all the Family events!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Yesterday was Wally's first Halloween!  I was trying to find costume ideas that Wally and Hazel puggy could wear in tandem.  Among the runners up (and probable future years costumes) were:

• Knight in shining armor and the dragon (Mariel sent a pretty awesome Martha Stewart how-to on this one)
• Bumblebee and a flower
• Luke Skywalker and Yoda
• Mouse and the Cheese

And the Winner:  Garden Gnome and the Butterfly!   (Sorry, the pics were not stunning. I still haven't gotten a grip on indoor evening shots.)

Although I had planned to try and make costumes this year, I ended up buying and modifying costumes.  It was way less work that way and I could be relatively certain I'd end up with something wear-able.  Maybe next year I'll get started on the sewing earlier.

We ended up going out for about 20 minutes with our neighbors who have a 4 and 7 year old girls.  Kayla and Alicia were both very cute as a peppermint princess and a piece of pizza.  We hit about 5 or so houses, and Brian pocketed Wally's candy for his midnight snack :)  Jackie and Justin came over with Colton, who is going to be 2 in Feb, and he had a very cute cow costume on.  We only got about 15 trick-or-treaters this year, which seems to be a little less than last year.  I'm surprised this neighborhood is so quiet on Halloween.  Although when Wally and I went out for a walk this morning, we did se quite a few smashed pumpkins on the street.  At least our destructive youth crowd is alive and kickin...