Ellerman Christmas, 09: Part 3

WARNING: This is a long post. Go get yourself a NackNack and meet me back here. Then while you read, I will be preparing for Big House Cleaning & Getting Rid of Stuff Day ’09, which is tomorrow.

And just like that, it was Christmas Morning. I wish I could say we all sat and excitedly opened gifts, but the reality is just not that simple, or that pretty. We opened a few, and enjoyed those a lot.

Above is Grady opening one of the airplanes Aunt Linda and Uncle Fred gave him and his bro. These airplanes were big hits! Cole could not have opened another gift and would have been happy. A few gifts in we started a downward spiral, and the rest of the time was spent opening a gift, soothing a baby, stepping outside to cool off, and repeat. 

We did get and give some great gifts, and hopefully next year the boys will be old enough to enjoy the spirit of giving to loved ones that makes Christmas so special. As you can tell from the picture below, this year Grady mostly gave dirty looks.

 Grammy doesn’t know this, but I damn near kept this purse for myself. It’s cute! Better not bring it here...I'd hate for it to "get lost" at our house.

Anyways, its not all about gifts, it’s about time with loved ones. Grammy took us on a walk to the Pier.

We ran across bridges.

 

Stopped to learn about “pants”. Notice that Grady has again convinced someone to carry him.

 And wandered out onto the pier.

 

And back towards the house we went, with Grady leading the way. Enough of this walk, he says.

 

Dear friends of Dean & Gail are now stationed in Pensacola, and they graciously [foolishly?] opened their home to us on Christmas for Christmas dinner. After naps we packed up and started the Ellerman caravan over to Pensacola.

Once we were loaded in the car, we explained to the boys that we were going  to the Naval Air Station, and Grady promptly put on his Top Gun glasses. Think he’d be a better Goose, or Maverick?

A quick drive filled with landmarks [yook! shish! yights! wahwah] later we got to our destination.

I didn’t get any outside pictures, but the house is a gorgeous old home. I’d tell you more about it, but the Kilkennys are great hosts and gave me wine soon after arriving, so I don’t remember much in the way of house details. To sum up: it’s old, it’s big, and has ghosts. That’s pretty much all I remember. If you want more details, go visit, but don’t drink wine until the tour is over.

Here we are, getting the memorable tour from Marianne.

 Grady decides he wants to be carried by Momma, so Keith becomes the photographer.

Admiring the view from the 2^nd story screened-in wraparound porches. Is it weird that it always shocks me to see how big my hair looks from behind?

 Now inside for some visitin’, as we’d say in my family.

Sean and Cole checked out one of the many trees.

Evan fed his momma.

The ladies exchanged gifts.

 

Ken and Sean chatted.

 

Evan and Grady checked out the dip.

 

Grady really liked the dip. SIDENOTE: On our way to Florida we stopped at Burger King for lunch. I would try to defend our choice by pretending we don’t let them eat our fries to keep it healthier, but let’s be honest, we’re lazy sometimes. At Burger King Grady dipped his fries in ketchup! I could not be prouder. Not sure why this particular achievement made me happy, but it did. And here, at Marianne’s spinach dip he dipped, repeatedly, his cracker and licked the dip off. Sanitary? No. Cute? Yes. And I wasn’t being a completely bad parent, I warned anyone coming to eat the dip that Grady had been double dipping. That’s fair, right? Grady joined me in warning people.

Cole is hanging out on the couch with the other big boys. 

 He adored Pat.

 And liked when Sean stopped talking to Ken and played Peekaboo with him.

 

Meanwhile Evan wondered off.

And Cole and Grady decided to leave handprints on any and every glass surface.

No gathering is complete without lots of group photos. The Ellermans.

 The Kilkenny’s.

 The Elders.

 The -Relatively-Youngsters.

Grady likes, no wait, LOVES opening and closing doors. When you play with doors, you’re bound to get a finger caught, and I am so grateful someone else was there to comfort Grady. Have I mentioned how heavy he is?

 Keith and I love our new camera, but our picture taking does take backseat to one thing: eating. And it was dinner time. Because we were completely engrossed in dinner, I don’t have any pictures of it, but I do have some fun after picture activities. Like…the menfolk teaching our kids to play with fire.

 Nice, Pat.

 And Grampie.

 The boys were trying to blow the candles out. Our two aren’t very good at it yet [mental note to practice before their 2^nd birthday], but Evan was an excellent candle blower. I was so amazed by his skills/wondering why he’s so used to fire [what do the Tennants do over in Madison?] that I forgot to take a picture.

 

While Grampie had Grady mesmerized, Joe made me a very stout Irish Coffee. The rest of this blog is a collection of warm fuzzy memories because that Irishman can make a good drink! His name is Kilkenny, after all.

Grady figured out that Grampie had cheesecake.

 Hmmmm…and Momma has cheesecake!

 Hey! There’s Dada.

One final gathering in the living room after dinner, where we did all sorts of things, like...

Teaching Joe how to play.

 Checking out Grammy’s picture taking skills.

 Chatting about football.

 Surveying the scene.

A little wrestling.

 Relaxing.

Grady and I discussed the history of the house, and he wasn’t pleased with my rendition on Marianne’s tour, so he took to reading about Quarters A all by himself.

And just like that, the night was over.

A Merry Christmas, indeed.

Ellerman Christmas, 09: Part 2

Day 2 was Christmas Eve, and we were getting into the festive spirit. It’s Cole. No, it’s a reindeer!

It was raining outside, and anyone with little kids knows the rain is your enemy, so we went to a place Grammy found to do a little bouncing and sliding.

We’d slide.

 Hop off and run to the stairs.

 

Where Uncle Ken would help us do it all over again.

 All this sliding will wear a person out, so we headed back home for a nap.

 

Our two boys aren’t fans of spending lots of time indoors, so off we went for a walk down to the pier in Grammy and Grampie’s neighborhood. 

 At some point Grady got smart and realized he could demand to be carried. 

One thing you can count on during an Ellerman family get together is a fun night of game playing. So after babies went to bed, I narrowly dodged playing Scrabble [phew!] and we played SKAT. This was a new game to most of us, but G & G gave us a quick tutorial. Post-tutorial Grammy put her game face on and passed out coins.

We played.

Shuffled, and repeated.

Sometimes we knocked [part of the game, and yes, I do look a little crazy here, that’s how I intimidate my opponents].

 And took a break to let Angela open her birthday card as we sang to her and devoured the ice cream birthday cake. She’s a Christmas Eve baby! Happy birthday Angela.

And a few more rounds of SKAT later, Grammy got SKAT! She’s a mean card game player. 

More tomorrow about our Christmas Day!

Ellerman Christmas, 09: Part 1

I'm taking a break from unpacking, laundering and figuring out where in this small house I can fit all of our new gifts to tell you a little bit about our Christmas. It was a good one, with so many things to remember. I'm breaking it down vacation-style and will tell you a little bit about each day over the next week. I thought about cramming it into one post, but I'd hate for little details to get lost that way. And, I'm tired and this is less work right now.


Wednesday we got up, ate some pancakes and hit the road southbound. We're never really sure what to expect from the boys during long trips. We've had good trips, great trips, and some brutal ones. This one was not too bad. We stopped a few times to stretch legs and eat, and made it to Grammmy and Grampie's house by early afternoon.

And look! G & G also have a tree! YOOK! YIGHTS! We took in their tree, then we left Grampie at home while we went to a local park.

Fast forward a few hours when our boys are in bed, and Aunt Angela, Uncle Ken and Cousin Evan arrive. Evan gets put to bed, and the four new-ish parents head to Pensacola's McGuire's Irish Pub to catch up & enjoy some beer. 

 

 

Here I got a little fancy and was playing around with the camera & no flash. See how nicely I captured the guy texting behind Keith? 

 

Thanks for babysitting, G & G!

That wraps up Day 1. More from me tomorrow. 

Finally.

Keith and I are done with work for the week, we're close to done with the packing [totally a lie, we've only piled the clothes onto the dining room table], and the house is decently clean. Time to relax and enjoy a little family time. We head south early in the morning.


As I was searching for a Christmassy picture you've not yet seen, I found this! My three boys, one year ago.

And this year. You can barely see Cole's face because he's standing next to me and pointing, and that's what makes it perfect to me. Pointing. It's what he does. And Grady? Grady sits on my hip. That's what he does. My arms are wicked strong.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Merry Christmas

I logged on to tell you about our weekend, but the computer is not cooperating. So instead of a long rambling email about what we did, here are a few pictures to tide you over. We were busy!