the Rays: Catching Up: November 2010

November began, as most months do, on the 1st and on this first of November we celebrated my 28th birthday. A low key party was the highlight of the day and about all we could handle with both girlies battling bad colds! A significant and defining factor of parties in Michaela's mind is dressing up...so we all added a little glitz to our glam (which isn't much these days!). It was fun.

M helping examine a gift...I don't know how I got through all those years of unwrapping presents before she was born. She's an expert!

Another defining piece of "partying" is party games, so after dinner we busted out Farm Lotto (circa 1954 and yes, Pete and Hannah, the same farm lotto we played as kids!).

Lotto brought some much-needed laughs to our stuffy noses! Thanks family.

Much of the remainder of the month was spent like this...sickness came to visit and just decided to stay! Wonderfully, we didn't get any secondary infections (a miracle for M!). And we are grateful for instant streaming Netflix for sure!

Amidst every cold and cough session there is a day (about the 5th into it) when I start to feel a little crazy. Sometimes this crazy turns to tears and sometimes it turns to tutus! We definitely had a dance party one night and what you can't see is that I am also wearing a tutu. True. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

One fine day, later in the month, we attended the birthday party of a sweet little one and there happened to be a mini bounce house. M had never experienced one of these and she did pretty well as long as a friend was with her. Jumping for joy!

Someday soon, Sophie, you will rock this thing...but not today.

Another highlight of the month was getting our family Christmas picture taken before December 1st. Wonderfully, Andrew rubs shoulders with some great photo-folks in his line of work and so we set up a quick (17minute) lunchtime session with sweet Laura...who graciously snapped some fabulous shots...

A favorite! Us with our blooming girlies.

Sister Smother

I LOVE walking.

These kinds of shots don't happen very often, and so I'm even more grateful for them when they do! I hope Sophie isn't eating grass!

As the week of Thanksgiving approached we prepared ourselves for another trip to the greater Boston area. This was our first big roadtrip since Sophie started walking and I was definitely a bit apprehensive about the 6 hours in the car...in the carseat! Thankfully, we had a few very specific blessings for our travel day...mild weather (so the girls could be outside during our stops), a surprisingly entertaining puppet that we had in the car (by default of an exersaucer we were returning to my sis-in-law), and perfect timing...a.k.a the moment we reached route 128North and were beginning to sit in traffic, we popped off the Lexington exit and had a delightful tea with my grandmother! By the time we got back on 128 for the last leg, it was free and clear! A gift.

Here are some tea-time favorites...

I love my detail-loving girl: taking in every etching on great Grandma's fine china cup.

My grandma has quite an extensive children's literature collection and thus also has a few heroines in the "flesh"(Olivia the pig and and an Eloise doll, to name two). Here is M gleefully sitting with Eloise.

Grandma beginning her book-loving training with her second great grandaughter.

Sophie our climber...upon great-grandpa's childhood chair!!!

Thanks Grandma for a wonderful visit!

Well, we reached our final destination all in one piece and were warmly welcomed by Andrew's parents, known to our kiddos as Mimi and Papa. The girls really did great. M is old enough that she's remembering places and thus seemed to have more joy in the "reunion" aspect. Fun to see. And Sophie is such an avid explorer and charmer that she just loved everyone and everything she came in contact with! Here are some shots from our Thanksgiving holiday!

Reading with Papa.

A new Turkey day tradition (I hope)...Mimi took all the cousins and together they made monkey bread! A great testimony to the different season we're entering with this dear cousin clan! They had a blast and the bread was a great addition to Thanksgiving dinner.

Mimi and Co.

"OK, everyone, smile with the fruit of your labors!"

Sophie had quite the adoring crowd when she awoke from her nap.

We had a marvelous feast and really a lot of fun as a whole Ray family. I wish I had some more shots of more people, but hands were quite busy with things other than cameras :-)

After a Friday recovery we geared up again to celebrate Sophie's birthday...

ONE YEAR old on November 27th

Mimi graciously let us decorate...

And Sophie graciously let me stretch this birthday crown around her head just long enough to click the photo. What a champ.

All the cousins were in attendance and only cemented their bonds more. Here are the girls! Such love.

Sophie ate a peppermint cupcake, I took all the older kids on a scavenger hunt, there were no major accidents, and all the adults seemed to have fun too. Hooray for family birthdays! Especially fun for us to celebrate with family that we don't see very often. We love you Rays!

After the party wound down we got on the road and headed home. At home Nani and Grandpa had been busy and the day after we arrived we had an evening of setting up the Christmas tree. Now, I'm fairly certain my folks have never gotten a tree this early, but maybe, just maybe, having grandkids under their roof inspired the desire to accelerate the Christmas spirit. Whatever it was, I was so grateful.

And the girls were just in awe. Can you tell from their stance?!