let's do some catching up: christmas day

christmas morning, yay! so piper didn't fully grasp the idea of santa, but she sure understands the concept of presents!

"santa susan" brought baby dolls for piper and a fantastic teddy bear for graham. piper immediately played with them, taking the teddy to her little brother and naming both her babies "graham."  she was also very interested in the leftover cookies that santa didn't finish.  

opening her stocking!

painting dada's nails with her new nail polish

and then, like in a movie ...

it started 

SNOWING!!!!

(ok, photo taken in the evening, after a little accumulation)

after a morning with just the four of us, we were joined by susan, amanda, tom, ryan and wendy for stockings, breakfast, and gift opening. we took a break from unwrapping to nosh on some fruit, yogurt, eggs and coffee. santa put hot sauces (peri peri, ghost pepper, belly fire) in the big kids' stockings, and we tested them all out on the egg bake.

piper testing out the hot sauce. i mean, fruit.

 piper must have liked how her toesies were lookin'!

aunt amanda and uncle tom had to head out to the airport that day, but we had a beautiful spiral cut vermont ham, sent by auntie-gram judy and mistah jeff, and cheese potatoes (nunes traditional) made by ryan, awaiting us for christmas dinner.  

 here's graham later that night, with the gifts we still hadn't opened yet!

it took us a couple days to unwrap everything! lesson learned.  i've even got two presents stashed in the trunk of my car for a rainy day.

we loved spending the day celebrating with family!

let's do some catching up: christmas! ah!

alrighty, i haven't posted about christmas yet, yet i just went to a valentine's day party. so here we go:

christmas eve!!!
(sorry most of the pictures are dark and yellowish.)
we loved having friends and family for christmas eve dinner.

patrick's aunt susan, in from pittsburgh, gave piper a lovely little holiday dress that pipes just adored wearing! patrick's brother and sister (tom and amanda) were both able to make it, from san diego and atlanta respectively, along with ryan, wendy, christine and nikolai.  we had nine adults and two kiddies in our tiny place and the seating wasn't the most comfortable, so we appreciate that everyone put up with it!

ryan spend half the night making this ridiculous face.
on purpose.

piper got to open her gift from aunt amanda, and you sure bet that the plastic clip-on earrings were a HUGE, HUGE hit.  look how carefully she is modeling her new jewelry! ha!

i forget what kind of meat this is called.  a prime roast i think? 

the boys were excited about how it turned out.

christine and nikolai brought awesome, awesome books for piper.
christine is reading if you give a mouse a pancake and pipes was quite cozy in auntie christine's lap!