A Whole Mess of Christmas Pictures

First of all, here is what you were each supposed to get as a Christmas card this year. Well, actually, some variation of this where Ellie is sitting in some dainty pose, giving a demure smile. By the time I got around to taking a picture of Ellie in her Christmas dress, she wasn't in the mood to hold still for the camera; dainty was not on the agenda. I wasn't even on the ball enough to get an electronic card done before Christmas.



Here are a few shots of Christmas morning:


Trying to get at her cousins' presents.


Us forcing her back to pay attention to and open her own gifts. Most the time she would open a present and then just walk out of the room to find something else to do. Maybe next year she'll get it.


Baby obstacle course. Like every parent ever we joked about how we could have just given the babies wrapping paper and boxes and they would have been happy. If that's true, I wonder why no one has ever tried it. Or have they?


A little tuckered out after all the excitement. Good preparation for a long nap on the airplane trip that afternoon to visit family in California. We should have taken some video or pictures at the airport. Turns out, Ellie LOVES airports. Lots of room to run around, lots of bored strangers to charm.


After church the next day we tried to catch some good shots of all the baby cousins. This is Ellie with Phoebe, about 10 mos. here. That ball Ellie is holding is a happy meal toy that one of her cousins got and didn't seem to miss. Since we left most of Ellie's Christmas toys at home, she kind of adopted everyone else's there. For some reason, she really got attached to this ball.


And really suspicious of people trying to take it from her.

Then we tried to get a group shot of all the babies. These cousins were all born within one year; the age range here is roughly 10-20 months.

And that was Ellie's pose in every group shot I got. Way to go, Ellie.


Once again, Ellie's favorite toy is any toy that belongs to someone else.

Lately, one of her favorite things has been to pull objects out of their containers and (sometimes) put them back in. She is quite proficient at unloading laundry baskets and diaper bags. This box of oranges provided quite a bit of entertainment for her. Soon she had all the little cousins in on the fun, and each baby had to be carrying one or more oranges with them around the living room. Not sure who started it, but eventually they all decided it would be a good idea to take bites out of the oranges too (which Ellie is doing in the picture).



She enjoyed her first trip to In N Out.


Quite enjoyed it.


And her first trip to see the ocean.


Almost everybody in this shot. It was a very bright, windy day.


It was a lot of fun, but pretty exhausting for this little one.


All in all, a good holiday season, but we were all ready for a good winter's nap when it was over.