Christmas 2011

We had so much fun in Tucson at Christmas. Eliot played a bunch with his cousins. When we arrived, he said, "Where's my cousins?" They weren't coming over until the next day, but he couldn't wait to see them. We also went to Melissa and Jonathan's engagement party; congratulations! Jonathan is Brady's cousin, via his Dad's sister, Aunt Carole.

We went on a couple hikes and Eliot has become quite the little Sonoran Desert naturalist; he is able to recognize at least a dozen different kinds of plants, most of the them cactus. "That's a saguaro cactus. That's a barrel cactus, and javelinas eat those fruit on it! That's a hedgehog cactus. That's a prickly pear cactus." And purple prickle pear, cholla, teddy bear cholla, ocatilla, mesquite tree, palo verde tree.... He had a lot of fun. We went for walks in the washes too, and Aunt Stacy brought magnets for the kids to collect iron. You put the magnet near the sand, and all the iron jumps on to the magnet. On one excursion, we visited Sabino Canyon and hung out for an hour or so by a creek. It was like being at the beach... sort of. It was fun. And Silas was very cooperative and didn't eat sand.

The kids got tons of toys -- so many that while we were able to check them and bring them back on the airplane, we could not fit all our luggage and people in our car to get home. Our friend Peter came to the airport in our car to pick us up, and he offered to take the light rail train back home so that we could all fit in the car with our stuff. And Brady still had to carry a big duffel bag full of toys on his lap. But the kids are enjoying them. Eliot got a small indoor trampoline from Santa. Silas got lots of smaller things.

Silas is walking now. He's wobbly, and falls a lot, but he doesn't get hurt when he falls. He just falls on his bottom or his hands and then gets right back up again and wobbles over to his destination. He rarely crawls anymore.

Brady and I are doing well. We go to the gym 2-3 times/week as we are trying to get

in better shape. It's cold and rainy in Portland, but sometimes the sun peaks out.

Both of us are still relatively happy at our jobs, and happy that we have jobs. And Eliot is relatively content with his nanny, although he would prefer that I stay home every day. Silas is very happy with the nanny; he totally loves her.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday.