Christmas in San Jose

We've been on vacation in San Jose for Christmas. It's been a wonderful trip. We are so lucky. 

Christmas eve we went for a walk in downtown San Jose to see the little Christmas village. Amy loved it.

It was really cold, but we bundled her up in a blankie and a hat, and she did just fine.

We stayed out for a few hours and then headed home so Amy could get to bed in time for a visit from Santa Claus.

Reece and I went back downtown to go to the basilica for midnight mass. It was beautiful. Afterwards, we came home, ate some cookies and went to bed.
In the morning, the wrapping paper cannon went off and underneath all the rubble Amy found a huge pile of great presents. She must have been very very good this year.

Bigfoot's baby

Amy likes to try on people's shoes. Here she is shuffling down the hall in Daddy's sneakers. In one hand is a play spatula from her new kitchen stuff. She was also carrying a pot lid around like a shield. This is a fun age. :)

Hi from sunny California

Baby Chase

We haven't blogged in a while but it isn't because we don't love you. We've been really busy and also, every single person in this house has been sick in the last week. Gross sick. We're feeling better. So much better in fact, that we've been able to have friends over, including Maya Lou and her baby sister Zoe. It was crazy having 3 babies at the same time (Oh man, how do people DO it???) but the girls all had a great time. They were a little shy at first, but before long everybody was swapping sippy cups and checking out eachother's diaper changes. Good times.

We'll post more soon, we promise.

Household archaeology

We had a little water damage in the back bathroom and so it was time to repair the wall and retile the room. When the tile guys tore off the old tile, they discovered two things. First, the water damage was much worse than anyone thought. Second, underneath the plaster wall are adobe bricks! We suspected that our house was old enough to be adobe, but I always thought this back portion of the house was probably cement block. It turns out that these little pigs live in a house made out of mud! How cool is that?

It's too bad that some of it got damaged, but isn't it amazing that you can make a house out of dirt and water. The repair guys said that's why our house keeps cool in the summer. Ha! I'm inviting him over in July.

The coolest part about having some of the bricks exposed is seeing how they're made.

We look at adobe all the time in our line of work. We've become experts in the texture, feel, even the sound of adobe under our trowels. I sometimes think it even smells a little different than regular dirt or house fill. Maybe that's leftover ashy smell from when sites burn, or maybe it's the smell of hundreds of years of water damage. I couldn't wait to touch and smell our wall. Alas, it is boring. It feels like hard mud and it smells like...nothing. 

There are lots of small pieces of grass and twigs stuck in the bricks. I still don't know how old the house is, but I like thinking about how those plants were growing in the ground and then they got mixed up by the builders. Now, they make up part of our house. 

It'll be nice to finally have the bathtub fixed and all, but how fun to get to know our home a little better.

 aaaaaand... here's your Amy picture.

Call me, yo!

Touchdown!!!

Amy learned a new skill while we were in Georgia. Now she can signal a touchdown. Good job, baby. Just keep practicing. The dawgs are going to need you in Athens in 18 years.

Pictures of the Christmas Tree

It is so hard to take pictures of the Christmas tree. Finally, finally, this year, I think I can do it. I've always wanted those magical tree pictures where the lights look all sparkly, but you don't wash everything out with flash or the room being lit up. 

 First, I turned out all the lights except the tree, the nativity (ours lights up), and one little lamp on the desk. It was dim, but not pitch black. I actually think the picture would have been prettier with a little more light.
But here's what I did. I put the camera on a tripod and then I made the aperture really small, like F.22. I set the ISO down to 200, and then took a really long exposure (30 seconds).  Hello sparklies!

They aren't the crispest pictures ever, and I'm not sure why. Could be that it's Blogger's problem and not the pictures.

Here's the whole room. You can see the nativity on the shelf. Who needs an inn when it's lit up like Vegas out there? Actually, the nativity is three lit up buildings and one dark manger in the middle.
I'm really enjoying learning all the settings on this camera. Poor Rob has to pose for a lot of test shots. Amy won't have it. She just wiggles her little heart out. She doesn't care if her whole childhood is documented in blurry images.

Oh Tannenbaum

This is the one. This is our tree. Smell it? *sniff*  It smells so good. Can we have this one please?

We'll add some lights and all our pretty ornaments.

Ornaments make a Christmas tree feel special.

Tucson Christmas

Tada!

A different kind of baby work

Rob was watching Amy the other day and he walked out of the room for something. When he came back he saw this:

She managed to scramble her little self up onto that chair and was "working" on the computer. She must really pay attention to us more than we know; can you see her hands? She's got her right hand on the mouse and Rob said she was banging on the keyboard with her left. Wow. I can't decide if this is a good sign because she is so observant, or a bad sign because she sees us on the computer so often. I mean look at her! She's like a little kid sitting there. Where's baby Amy? Welllllll, I guess she is sitting there in her jammies.  And her feet are 18 inches off the floor.

We're back!!

We're back from our wonderful trip to Georgia for Thanksgiving! Sorry about the blog break. We'll post more often now that we're home and the semester is winding down a little bit.

We had a great time at Mimi and Pop Pop's house. Amy made herself right at home. I guess she sits in all toy boxes, not just the one at home.

We saw aunt Karen who brought awesome new fridge toys that make a lot of noise and have a lot of pieces. We were finding those pieces everywhere. "Blue truck blue truck. Red Fire engine Weeeeooooowwwweeeeeoooooo! That's silly!"

There was much feasting. Here are mom and dad and Rob prepping the stuffing on Wednesday afternoon. It was sooooo good.

I also got to see my girls (and Whitney in spirit via cell phone). We went shopping for Emi's wedding dress and then we went out to the Flying Biscuit for dinner. What a fun time and it was so nice to see them. Emi picked the most gorgeous dress of all time.

We had a great time on Sunday afternoon playing in the yard with the Owens.

Well, most of us had a great time.....

I love having chances for Amy to hang out with her cousins. She loves them so much.

She's trying to climb up the slide to give M.M. a kiss.