Holidays

Alasdair took Christmas Eve day off & we spent it tromping around in the snow behind our house. For the Christmas Eve service, our church rents a little wooden chapel. It's heated by a wood stove & the only instrument was a harp; very beautiful and cozy. We drove straight from there to my parents house in MA, where we spent Christmas Day with my whole family. The highlight as always was watching Emily play with her cousins. The girls are old enough now that they really remember each other, and Emily loves baby Daniel.

(Visiting Great Granny Ware Christmas afternoon)

The day after Christmas, we drove to Philadelphia...almost. We 'd heard there would be snow, but weren't too concerned about it. Oops. We spent the night in a hotel in NJ and made it to Philly on Monday for Christmas take two with Alasdair's family. We spend the week hanging out with family & visiting some good friends.

(Emily kept asking me to clean the frosting off her hands, until I told her to lick it. Her lights lit up, and with a "yummm" she immediately started scraping off the roofing.)

This was the first year that we didn't have a New Years reunion with our college friends... but lucky for us a few other Dartmouth couples live in Philadelphia now, so we spent the evening at the Leanders' with the Chens.

Ps. I used to think it was so weird when parents talked about this in public... but Emily did her first poop on the potty this week. It was a fluke, since we aren't potty training yet, but Emily is very interested... so maybe soon. She also came out with the phrase "I did a poo" which she repeated over & over since it got such a great response. Also somewhat of a fluke, since she definitely doesn't understand pronouns yet. :)