Gifts Galore

Christmas has come and gone - all of the weeks of shopping and wrapping presents culminating in one exciting day of gift giving. We had high hopes pinned on this year's Christmas experience with Zachary - hoping that he would find the gifts more entertaining than the wrapping and ribbon. We were headed for disappointment :) - the unwrapping of the gifts seemed only mildly interesting, and once he arrived at the "toy of the year" - there was no more thought to ANY more presents. We actually have unopened presents still at our house as he was so distracted that there was little use. :) Sadly, we'll now have to shift our focus to NEXT Christmas as being "the one!" :) There were entertaining moments throughout the day, and I have included several pictures of the event. All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed spending the day with Amy's mom and watching the old classic "The Scarlet Pimpernel" on a lazy afternoon.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Zachary - the human present

Zachary on "the toy of the year" - a motorized 4-wheel ride-on toy.

A Christmas picture of our group to remember the occasion by

Weekend of Active Fun!

This has been a packed weekend for Zachary - he started off the weekend going to "Monkey Joe's" with friends Luke Deininger and Ella Pellindini. Monkey Joe's is an indoor play area for kids where they have tons of play structures around the room - Zachary's favorite is the tall slide! It is a work-out for parents as well who run around helping the kids up and down the different play choices! I've included a series of pictures as Zachary slides down - notice the huge grin on his face!

Today, we ventured forth to Animal Kingdom. Karis and I are not known for going to the Disney parks, as we generally try and avoid the Orlando tourist traps unless we have visitors from out of town, but when you have the good fortune of receiving free tickets - why not go!? We were fortunate in that the weather was very nice for the most part, and Zachary enjoyed the safari ride (tons of animals out and about today!) and the petting zoo.

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas - we've enjoyed getting everyone's Christmas letters!

AHS Christmas Party!

Sorry for the delayed post, but we went to the AHS Christmas party this morning, and I was hoping to have some fun pictures from the experience. There was a lovely brunch at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort, and the Mickey and Minnie Mouse characters dropped by, along with Santa! Zachary was very intrigued by Mickey, and tried to pull his face towards him to get a better look by grabbing his mask - poor Mickey - abused at Christmas! :) Later when Santa arrived, Zachary was engrossed in playing with his friends Anthony and Kiko - and was as mad as a hornet when we took him from their side to go up and get a picture with Santa Claus - note to self, next time just have Anthony and Kiko get in line with us! :)

We're doing some last minute shopping etc this weekend, and hope to have all of our Christmas errands completed. We sent out our Christmas letters late this week, so hopefully everyone will have them by this time next week!

Our post next week will most likely be delayed as well until Sunday as we have tickets to Animal Kingdom, so hope to have some fun pictures of Zachary enjoying the animals there to share with everyone.

Picture with Mickey & Minnie while Zachary grabs poor Mickey's face!
At this moment, considering selling Zachary off to the highest bidder! Any takers? (Just teasing!)

At last, picture with Santa - at least he's not screaming although he's definitely not sure what to make of this person!

New Furniture

Yippee! We got new office furniture for the old "imagination room" for any of you who have been to our house before. For those who have not, our formal living room was 100% empty for years, and then after Zachary's arrival we put in the old office furniture (that had survived our house flood many years ago by a small margin). Because it was empty, we would affectionately tell visitors that it was the "imagination room" because you could use your imagination to decorate it however your personal preference was! :) But after much saving and planning on what we'd buy, the furniture has now arrived! Our next purchase for this room will be a leather sectional and then we should be set - it is our intention that this will be a multipurpose room - computer/office, TV room, and PLAY room - but one step at a time!

This is the old room partially cleaned out (not much else other than an old bookshelf, filing cabinet and junk!:)

The new furniture...corner desk and an entertainment center in the middle with lots of bookshelves for our books! :)

The Gala & The Trip

Karis and I attended the FH Gala two weeks ago - it is always fun to get dressed up in fancy clothes and look at all of the cool stuff that is for auction. We've never bid on anything, but considered it this year when we got to the kids table - there were a lot of fun toys, but mostly for older kids, so we were spared another year! :) Lionel Ritchie was the entertainment this year, and Amy was anticipating the lovely ballads like "Say You, Say Me" and "Once Twice Three Times a Lady" - we had to leave early, so only had the opportunity to listen to 1 1/2 songs, but apparently after we left things got a bit wild. Most of the people attending the gala are not Adventist, and when Lionel invited them to get up and get "moving" they did so. Apparently it got to be quite the rock concert with women standing along the stage shouting at him about how hot he was. Hmm - not quite the ballads that we were expecting. It has caused quite a stir as you might imagine after the fact, so hopefully next year we'll go back to something more "normal."

For American Thanksgiving, we flew up to Indiana to visit the Hicks. Zachary experienced his first snowfall and some definitely cold weather! It was so fun to see them all, and Zachary quickly developed an attachment to Kevin - following him around begging to be picked up. Zachary slept in the same room as we did, and in the morning because he could see us, he would start yelling "Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi!!!!!.......Mama, HI!!!!" - even though we'd lay there like mummies without twitching a muscle, you can only let that go on for so long without laughing so we had some early mornings. Children's Benadryl was not our Savior on the way back, so while trying to get him to sleep he would scream and cry. We finally gave up the effort and he was much happier the rest of the flight. We were blessed each flight to have a row of three seats to ourselves, so Zachary could actually sit on his own seat. He turns 2 in April, so we won't have much longer anyway of having a free flight for him - not sure which is worse - having him sit and crawl all over you for the entirety of the flight or having to pay for a seat! :)

This picture is of our visit to the local dairy where you get a bus tour of the barns, see where they make the feed, can see baby calves being born, and then get to eat cheese! :)

The Hicks children shared their sunglasses with Zachary, which he quickly came to love and actually keep on his face!