Christmas Card

Here's our card for this year!



I wasn't sure if I was going to get these out in time, with everything else going on, but I did! In the interest of saving trees (and, you know, postage) we figured we'd focus on people that we don't have regular online contact with, so don't feel bad if you don't get one!

I also made a card to send to friends in Korea:



I did have some people in Korea that I was keeping in touch with, but it's been years. We'll see how many of those addresses are still good. This is actually a New Year's card, which is nice because it works for either the solar or lunar new year, so it's okay if they don't get there right away.

(Credits: stamped alpha and red, blue, and green papers by Michelle Coleman, tabbed card by Nina. Everything else is mine.)

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Andy at 51 weeks

Taken December 19.



In the crib again. This is the only place I can get him to hold still and look at me.




This is his serious face.






He's been pretty cranky the past couple of days--that other top tooth is coming in. Today he's walking a lot farther before falling down. I saw him go about eight or nine feet earlier. He's also been chattering and making sounds like "wooja wooja wooja" over and over. So cute.

Our $6 tree

Our solution to Andy-the-climber: tabletop Christmas tree! Doug found a little cheap one for us. It came in a long skinny box, and we had to pull the branches down and fan them out.



Kate was so excited by the proceedings that she brought out her stuffed animals to watch. Andy was pretty interested, too.



Kate put on the ornaments that she colored. (See, it drops needles just like a real tree!)



I did take the price tags off the back of the ornaments after this.



Ta da! It's very red. One of our strings of colored lights wasn't working, so we have one colored string and one red string.

Andy at 50 weeks

Taken December 12. (Almost done!)







I love this one.




"Oh, come on, Mom, aren't you done yet?"

Guess what we got?

A Flip video camera! (We decided to unwrap it and charge it, you know, in case we want to take any videos for Christmas.)



Kate's been making a neighborhood with boxes, Andy's been pulling movies off the shelf. Just a typical day at home.

Thanks (my) Mom and Dad! Looks like Flip is a hit!

Meeting Santa

More from the ward Christmas party (December 11).



There was a long line to see Santa. Here Kate waits with Dad, holding her crocheted octopus. Just earlier that day she decided that the octopus's name was Noella.



Andy says, "I'm sitting on some strange guy's lap... should I be worried?"



Andy looks for reinforcements.



The reinforcements are not too happy about it either.



Kate decided that she didn't want to sit on Santa's lap, but wanted to stand and talk to him. That was fine with Santa.

Andy at 49 weeks

Taken December 5.



I took these while we were at the church for the Festival of the Nativity. This was tricky.




Andy meets Fake Baby Jesus.



You can see his one little tooth on top. (I've been calling him Fang.)



Plastic lamp (another prop).




Smile!

Photography at the Nativity

This picture of Andy just cracks me up.

The first weekend in December was the Festival of the Nativity at the church. (We went to see it last year and Kate wore her dragon costume. This year we were all more traditionally attired.)

They had a manger scene where people could dress up and get pictures taken. Larry Golden was doing the photography, and he had asked me if I could come in and spell him for a bit on Saturday so he could get a break.



Here's the setup (not crooked in real life), complete with fake sheep and fake baby. There were a few people who put their own babies in the manger, if they were small enough.



And half of Larry's lighting. This was fun to use.

We went over early and got Larry to take some family pictures for us, with my camera. (Not dressed up, just us.)



This one's pretty good...



... but I like myself a little better in this one. (Doug looks exactly the same.) We finally got that vertical 8x10 for my mom! We tried back at the six-months photo shoot and just couldn't get anything.

I took Andy's Saturday pictures, too (which I will post next) and then Doug took the kids around to look at the displays and I manned the fort while Larry went home and got something to eat.

It wasn't really busy, but I did get to take pictures of a few families who came in. All the pictures are here. Anything with an absurdly wide angle is probably mine. I was using Larry's camera and had a few times that I moved up and zoomed out where I should have moved back and zoomed in. (I'm just not used to working with a zoom at all!)

I didn't get any pictures of the rest of the festival, but it was quite a production. They even pulled out my backdrop from Savior of the World to use in the Relief Society room with the artwork display. It was such a big production, in fact, that it completely displaced the three wards that meet in that building and we had to meet somewhere else that Sunday.



When Doug came back to get me, there was some great light coming in the side window, so I asked him if he could take a picture of me with the kids. They were not into it.



Kate, for some unfathomable reason, fell in love with this plastic fish (it was there for a prop, though I don't think anyone used it). She named it John and was just heartbroken when we told her it couldn't come home with us.



Andy conked out!

one week to go

Buying stamps on the last Saturday before Christmas = Yikes.

I found the missing library book, but I seem to have misplaced some of the ornaments.

a light dusting

Our snow on Sunday. It didn't last long!

Andy at 48 weeks

Taken November 28.



My light wasn't as good this time and I ended up with a lot of unfocused photos, but I picked out some good ones.







Andy isn't quite walking for real yet, but getting closer and closer. Our new favorite thing is singing "Bingo" and clapping. He's such a cute clapper. He also likes to see these pictures of himself. (I imagine he'd probably like pictures of any other smiling baby just as much!)

Silent Pipe, Holy Pipe

(The title was Doug's idea.)

This last Friday was our ward Christmas party, where we played the pipe chimes. Doug got a video with his PDA--not great, but you can hear it.



I'm the one doing the pointing. It's hard to tell, I know!



Better pictures! (I think they're having a good time, they're just concentrating.)



That's Don Tracy's twenty-year-old Christmas sweater. Isn't it fabulous?



You can see Doug in the background, trying to film and hold a wiggly baby at the same time.

Originally I had planned something quite a bit more complicated with the bass part, but I didn't test it out with a piano player ahead of time, and we discovered that it just didn't sound right. So we improvised something simple using only three of the six low notes that we'd made. This was probably just as well, as we didn't really have enough people for three more big pipes. Most of our players were doubled up, and Tim and Don each had three.

Big thanks to everybody who helped out with this! (On both sides of the pond.)

We are finally getting some snow today. It's been cold and dry for about a week now. Andy and Kate are both fascinated by the falling flakes.