Easter 2011

With Chris' side of the family I decided to host Easter Dinner at our house.  Ella REALLY wanted to have an Easter Egg Hunt so this was a good way to meet her request.  It went really well! As you will see in the pictures, Nancy bought beautiful dresses and suits for all 6 grandkids!  We had LOTS of people which I will list here for my own remembering...(which I don't do well sans lists)

Phil, Nancy, Jean
Dave & Julie
Amy, Matt, Hannah, Christopher
Andrew, Ping, Silas, Eva, Lao-Lao, Lao-Ye
Matt D
Liz, Connor, Sam, and Sophie Nixon

I'm in love with this shot of Sadie Amy captured.  Beautiful!!

It started POURING about 5 minutes after the mad dash for the 90 or so candy filled eggs the dads hid in the yard

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So happy to have Ping's parents visiting from China for a few months!

Chris' grandmother loves getting time snuggling Sadie

I "caught" Christopher and Sam (who just met that day) sitting in Sadie's room reading her board books and giggling-so cute!

 

 

 

 

Peep Adventure!!!

The weekend before Easter we took advantage of really good deal on Certifikid for what we started calling our "Peep Adventure."  It was a night in an executive suite at the Gaylord National Harbor and admission to a bunch of different Peep related activities for families.  It was SO much fun to get away and we were treated like royalty by the Gaylord staff!  We even were handed gift bags with stuffed animal peep chicks, candy, a schedule of events, tickets for events and more.  Overall we had awesome family time and would love to go back for more family fun events at National Harbor!

Sadie checking out our fancy bedroom

Our first activity was gingerbread Easter Candy Houses

See the 2ft tall Peep on the top balcony?  That was one of many we found on the Peep Scavenger Hunt :-)

Sadie was fascinated by the Giant Peep!

It was pouring outside when the Easter Egg Hunt was scheduled so they did it inside.  Ella still had a blast.

Fun Mommy-daughter time on our sleepover at the hotel

Chris and Ella hid behind the curtains to watch the crazy thunder storms over the Wilson Bridge-it was a perfect spot!

Brunch the next morning was awesome.  So. Tasty. Though I must say, Sadie did NOT sleep well on our little trip away :-(  But, it was only one night so it wasn't too bad.  She was pretty happy even being somewhat sleep deprived.

I'm a sucker for topiaries :-)  So glad the rain cleared up by our second day there.

It's an impressive hotel even from outside!

It was a great trip that we'd definitely do again. 

Christmas Day 2009

Christmas Day was also fun and we spent the whole day with Chris' family. Lots of people, lots of really good food, and lots of presents. By the time we left there were lots of people sleeping all over the house so clearly, a good time was had by all :-)

My adorable nephew Silas


Ping read the Christmas story in Chinese so her mom (who is visiting) could understand


All the kids got in on helping Mom-mom unwrap her Snuggie!

Somehow I lucked out in actually getting a seat on the couch before Brooklyn and Charlie took over



Jesus' Birthday Cake!

The 5 siblings together!

The sisters-in-law

the "married-ins" :-)

Kicking off the Christmas Season

We went to a local festival the day after Thanksgiving and it will definitely become a new family tradition! It totally exceeded our expectations and we had a great time. I took about 175 pictures-partially because there were that many fun things and partially because I LOVE experimenting with the new camera.

This was one of our favorite trees-simple but beautiful

Ella loved this ornament. We got lots of ideas for our annual ornament exchange with Chris' family

Besides 500 decorated trees, all kinds of vendors, live music, storytimes, pony rides, a carousel and food, there were animals!!! I never pass up a chance to touch creatures and Chris was up for touching the largest one there.

Ella and I both love crafts and spent a long time in "craft corner" at the festival. This was mostly because the really nice craft-helper-guy kept bringing us new crafts to do for free after we paid our 2 tickets for the first one! (and we got the tickets for free from people who were leaving and had extras!)

The Kids rock band Milkshake was performing and since we have their CD we were excited for Ella to see them in person. She was oddly fascinated and horrified simultaneously. Even with her hearing aids off she covered her ears the whole time and looked terrified but didn't want to leave! She wanted to be off to the side, way in the back, behind Christmas trees and watch from afar but somehow enjoyed it!

I really loved the snowflake tree

Here are a lot more pictures (not all 175, just the good ones)

Thanksgiving #1

Since my parents and Chris' parents live 10 minutes from each other we're able to do 2 Thanksgivings in one day. This year my parents house was at 11am so that gave us a little extra time to get hungry again before eating again at 6pm :-)

The whole group :-)

Ella being silly

Ella had fun digging through the drawers in my parents dining room and choosing special spoons for each person. Random, but she was engrossed in for about 25 minutes.

Since it was a brunch Thanksgiving there was bacon which Ella's never really tried but was WAY into this time! A girl after mommy's heart :-)

Thanksgiving was my Grandmother's 91st Birthday! We celebrated last weekend but it was still great to celebrate her loving, generous, fun-loving, vibrant spirit again! We LOVE her so much and are so thankful for her.

Potrait experiment of my beautiful sister

This pretty much captures the spirit of my always-laughing Dad :-) Lots to be thankful for!

Here's why I LOVE my family

So, we're sitting at the dinner table tonight chatting about our days and to give kudos for something Ella did well today Chris offered her a fist bump and she started to move towards him with her fist balled but then stared at his fist, paused, pulled back, hesitated then said "Hey! Ms.Tiffany (her preschool teacher) says that's another way to say the letter A!!" It took Chris and I a second to realize she was talking about the sign language alphabet and she was completely right!
This began one of the most adorable, amusing dinners I've had in a long time. Chris proceeded to ask Ella if she wanted to learn the next letter and she was thrilled to learn B, then C, then D. I also was so impressed that Chris knows the entire sign language alphabet that I was on he edge of my seat to be reminded of each one. We also started occasionally requiring Ella to eat a piece of chicken or a green bean or a bite of her "burrito" (really a potsticker but she insisted it was a Chinese burrito) to get the next letter. 20 minutes later Ella ate ALL of her dinner (virtually unheard of here) and we all learned to sign all the letters! At some point in the middle I was saying something to Chris and Ella interrupts us to say "Dad! Dad! You are FABULOUS at the alphabet!" My heart really melted to see all of us so excited to learn together and just be together and enjoy each other. At least for now, I REALLY love my little 3 person family. We're a perfect fit for each other.

Outer Banks!

Last week was our family vacation with Chris' side of the family (plus about 10 people from Amy's husband's family). There were 25 of us in the nicest, biggest beach house I've ever seen! There were 14 bedrooms, a kitchen and dining room that was about the size of my house, an impressive theater room, about 30 TVs (it was excessive), a pool, and a private "boardwalk" out to the beach. You can tell, we were impressed by the house. Anyway, we did a "formal" family photo shoot on the beach (coordinating outfits and everything!) so those pics will be coming soon. Here are some of the more fun pics of people and stuff we did.


I think this was my nephew Silas' first ice cream cone :-)

A close-up of our little beauty-kinda scary!

Erin, Dave, and Chris on "Adventure Night" (think teams, sand dunes, mini-golf with "special rules", beer, and Chris' truck stuck in the sand for 30 minutes)

Matt was the creator of "Adventure Night" :-)

Ella was obsessed with this umbrella

The cousins had the time of their lives playing ALL DAY EVERY DAY!

Chris and I on top of he Wright Brother's Memorial


That's the Memorial up on the hill behind them

Ella spent lots of time in the pool-last summer she needed the floating bathing suit but she does great with just the "water wings" or "blow-bluffers" as my family calls them

Chris' rents having fun when we were out to dinner for some seafood

Getting ready for the beach. Yes, Chris is wearing Ella's shorts on his head.

A really fun game of Catch Phrase once the kids were asleep.

Ella and Christopher got a little carried away in Nana's bathtub!

On the drive Ella did GREAT. She watched DVDs a lot of the time and it was SO cute to hear her laughing out loud at the movies or telling Curious George to "watch out!"

Watch for some of the good pics from the family photo shoot soon!