Welcome Baby Smoer!

We have a new cousin!  Nathaniel Zeke joined us December 29th at 2:07am.  Our crew is pretty smitten.  We had our first official viewing today.  Nathaniel was very well behaved and slept through the entire visit.

Big sister Hanora, a pro, made the intros.

Everyone got a turn.

Roby was interested but declined his turn as he preferred not to have to feed the little guy.  Feeding appeared to be a rather involved thing and Roby preferred to be less "hands on."

I was there too, as were parents-on-deck Uncle Eric and Aunt Ellie.  I somehow missed a picture of the actual parents.  Total fail to be made up shortly.

This little guy has a pretty excited team.

Beach trip with the Tripps

We followed Christmas with our usual hike to Kehoe beach.  This year we went with our Tripp cousins Sachi, Brian, Norah, Harvey, Clyde and Gus as well as Heiko and Hanora.  

Dave and Eric played catch...

 while the cousins cast spells on each other in a giant Harry Potter inspired dune chase

 Eli hiked out with the big backpack, carrying his stomp rockets and the soccer ball.

 Sarah Jane took some pictures

 Roby took over backpack duties

Christmas

We had a lovely, if totally overwhelming, Christmas.  We kicked off the formal festivities with the traditional grandparent lunch.  

 After the kids spent Christmas Eve at the jelly bean factory, we got them dressed and ready for church.  In the interim we swapped out our refrigerator and dishwasher while getting ready to host 33 for dinner.  I going to go on record as not recommending doing those two things on the same day.

 We started dinner with our traditional Cheese Course D'Eric.

 We had bourbon marinated pork tenderloin and managed to squeeze all 33 in our back room.

 After dinner we had the usual reading of the Night After Christmas though Eric did the honors this year not Zeke.  We also added a new tradition - "Ding Dong and Dash" - a game played by our guests and one of my daughters (ehhem - ANNA) while the adults were busy totally neglecting them.

 Christmas morning we woke up to a very cold house.  Turns out our heater was broken - the case of the cracked Nest has yet to be solved.  The girls woke up early.  The boys slept in until 7:30.  The girls nearly lost it but let their brothers get their beauty rest.

 Santa had been there.

He brought each kid a scooter...

 and some other stuff.

 Most importantly, he brought them a teepee.  Big hit.

 As were the scooters.

 Conveniently we had a full scooter race track courtesy of the party the night before.

 Sarah Jane was pretty excited about her new clothes - some boots, jeans and a vest (from Nana and Papa) - we might be entering a new era.

Anna on stage and other December updates

We've had a lovely December.  We started with a baby shower for Aunt Whitney.  The girls made cucumber sandwiches with cookie cutters.  I think this counts as my Christmas cookie making this year.

We are very excited to welcome Baby Boer.  And not just because it gave me an excuse to get sucked into Pinterest depths that I had never visited before.

That evening we celebrated Hanukkah at the Ganes' for the 33rd year in a row.  The candles were lit, the songs were sung. Miraculously no one threw up in the middle of dinner.

El Nino has made its appearance.  We had a magnificent 7 min storm and woke up to find the road full of hail from the night before.  Fingers crossed this translates into lots and lots of snow!

We got our tree in our usual totally incognito style.  Absolutely no one notices when you ride down the street with four kids and a tree in a bike...

We decorated.

 Anna's class performed at the holiday assembly.  This kiddo likes being on stage.

Nana and Papa were there too.  

Merry almost Christmas!