Christmastime and Birthday

We've had sort of a nonstop past week or two. I had a wedding on the 21st, followed by Christmas Eve, Christmas, and then Schell Christmas, Evangeline's Birthday and then a funeral today. These events were punctuated by a weeks worth of vomiting from Irene.

So this doctor station had been shipped to my office by my parents in order to conceal it from the girls before Christmas. It was... sort of.. hidden.... but not really. Evangeline saw it several times, getting really excited about it. I simply told her it was for other kids. So, Christmas comes around, and it turns out its really for her!

Aunt Jessie was even able to come.

Did someone get a slinky in their stocking?

This is in Asheville.

Uncle Ed and Grandaddy snoozing away.

I played with this thing when I was a little boy.

Tickling great grandaddy.

Cool earwarmer headbands!

 The rest of these are from Evangeline's birthday party.

Thanks to everyone who didn't just send one present for Christmas and birthday.

BIRTHDAY CAKE

Present opening. This must be really cool to have more presents just after you had a ton of presents.

We had a few minivan loads of kids here, but it was pretty sane.

And to top off the night, we've got a real tea party with real crumpets.

Its supposedly almost winter.

But you wouldn't know it here. 65 degrees. Perfect day for the playground.

"Climbing a tree"
BTW - that is the new minivan, which I don't think has made an appearance on this blog yet. Its pretty awesome.             

This is the new preferred method of sliding.

The minivan can hold a ton more leaves than the Subaru does. Luckily, we are stockpiling other peoples' leaves for the church farm. I call it "brown gold." Someone actually came by one day and asked if they could buy it from us. The girls love spotting leaves on the side of the road, and they also love the rare occasion when I let them climb the pile.

And then there was this slide at the playground. Worst slide in the world.

Catching up. A Little.

Here are some recent (and not-so-recent) pics. 

Ammi won the "scratched camera lense blur on my face"  contest.
Besides that, I like this picture and we all still miss having all of you around.

It was somehow 70 degrees last week, and we went to
the park to goof around.

Some sort of leap frog.

They look like teenagers here.

We did the orange/clove decoration thing.

Evangeline was careful and took a long time to
place her cloves in a neat line.

Irene drilled a dime-size hole in hers and stuffed all the cloves in.

We celebrated with hot chocolate. I somehow sensed we should take
Irene's shirt off.

We tried a new bagel place. They got chocolate chip bagels, but
ended up liking the savory ones better.

Irene!

Greensboro is pretty good for cool Christmas lights. We are not
so good at taking pictures of them, however.
This was really pretty, though. A whole neighborhood put out
luminaries on Gaudete.

You can almost imagine them nestled in the snow.

Here is the "light ball neighborhood". We think there might
be thousands of light balls this year. It keeps getting bigger.
I like how the lights look like a city.

Up close. Lots of extension cords. 

Today! The 10 minutes today when both girls weren't crying.
They both have colds, too.

cheese

Ellee and I spent last Saturday night at Goat Lady Dairy in Climax, NC as an anniversary gift from my parents. It was amazing. I sort of want to go into the goat dairy industry now.

hard cheeses

crottin cheeses

 And then Shauen came through Greensboro and stayed the night with us on Monday. This was a total treat for the girls. They love Uncle Shauen. And he is really good at building towers. Its weird, Irene normally finds immense pleasure in destroying the towers, but was really trying to build huge towers with Shauen. Anyways, we hope that he is able to build huge block towers in Nairobi with his three boys.

Advent

The rest of the world thinks its Christmas already, so we are obliging them by attending their activities. 

We went to Greensboro's tree lighting, which was full of people.

We went to Fincastle's for dinner and the girls were great. Irene ate a bunch of ranch dressing. I ate a bunch of fried pickles. Evangeline almost ate all of her hangurber. I ate all of my Heisenberger.

And THE BIG MOMENT OF THE NIGHT!
The grand countdown. Thousands of people all watching the tree, counting down from 10.
And then the top of the tree did not light.
Pretty much the most important part.
Didn't work out.
So close. But yet so far.

But whatever. They had cotton candy.

And that is pretty much how she was for the whole time.

This building faces the park with the tree. There were a bunch of parties going on. We look forward to hosting one when we live there one day.

And here is a video of Irene with the microkorg vocoder.

fall into fall

She's been wanting to do this for so long.