Christmas Trip - Day 4

We had a very low key Saturday after Christmas. We stayed in the whole day, and tried to enjoyed the last few hours with the family before we had to drive off. Unfortunately, Patrick and Laurin had to work, so we only saw them for a few minutes each. We spent the rest of the day packing and spending time with Grandmother, Mom, and Dad.

We took off at about 7pm again and it took us 12 hours to drive back. A storm rolled through Shreveport earlier in the day and we managed to catch up with it after a couple hours' drive. Unfortunately, Daniel woke up crying when the rain started pounding us. We stopped after a little while and burped him thinking that maybe his tummy was hurting. But soon after we got in the car he started crying again. I got into the back seat with him and tried to play and talk to him to try to calm him down. Nothing helped until, out of desperation, I started singing old Russian songs to him. He calmed down immediately! I was shocked! I did not realize that my crappy, out of tune singing, can have such an effect on him. But at that point I was ready to sing for the rest of the trip if that was necessary. I sang for about half an hour to him, and than we played his new favorite game: "through everything away and let mama get it". At the next stop (it was close to midnight) we fed him another bottle and he fell asleep and slept all the way home.

If I have not mentioned it before, Daniel is a very lucky little boy! He has 9 grandparents and great-grandparents still living. On Stephen's side they are: Great-grandmother Evelynn (or as Daniel will call her Gigi), Great-grandmother Ruby (Granny), and Grandparents John and Monnie. On my side they are: my maternal grandmother Lidia, my mother Nina, my paternal grandparents Emil and Inna, and my father Gregory. So I am on a quest to take pictures of Daniel with all the different predecessors. I am not sure if we will ever be able to get them all together to take a group picture... Well, here are pictures with Gigi:

And the four generations of the Cole clan:

This is it! The Christmas 2008 is over, it has been a very happy and busy time for us. We really enjoyed going over to Shreveport and seeing everybody there. Thank you Grandmother, Mom, and Dad for making us feel as welcome as ever! We hope that you will be able to come out and visit in March for Daniel's 1st Birthday and in April for Stephen's 40th Birthday and maybe even sooner :) We really appreciate everything and love you more then ever!

Christmas Trip - Day 3

The Friday after Christmas came and with it a much awaited visit to Jason, Krystal, Alli, Walker, and Griffin's. Jason is Stephen's first cousin on his mother's side. Stephen, Jason, and their cousin Mark used to hang out together when they were little. But as time went by, they all moved away from each other and ended up not hanging out as much. Stephen and I reconnected with Krystal and Jason in June when they came to visit New York. You can read all about it on Krystal's blog HERE.

I am posting this picture especially for you, Krystal. This is the reason Daniel was so good during our visit:

I was amazed at how well behaved and sweet Alli, Walker, and Griffin are. And they were so good to Daniel. Even Griffin gave Daniel a hug.

Daniel was not too sure about the group hug, he just wanted to watch everybody :) But he quickly warmed up and it was smiles all around as usual.

Three little cousins playing:

Griffin even delivered Daniel's gift:

This picture has no special significance, I just thought Daniel looked cool standing in his little shoes being supported by Chele. Chele was so sweet to Daniel, hanging out with him for a long time. Daniel really liked her. I think Chele wants another baby :)

I know this is not the most flattering picture of Danny, but I really liked the sky behind the boys

Daniel having a ball:

Two little buddies hanging out on top of the letter box:

Two happy mommies with their babies:

Our most gracious hosts:

I really wanted to take this picture. There are four generations of the Holt side of the family here. Granny Holt with two of her children, Monnie and Danny, three of her grandchildren, Jason, Michele, and Stephen, and five of her nine! great-grandchildren Hannah, Alli, Walker, Griffin, and Daniel.

Krystal and I have been joking around about who is the better icer (is that even a word?), Stephen or Jason. So Krystal put together a little icing-off competition. Just look at the concentration on those boys faces right before the countdown :)

And here they are, all done. And guess what!? Stephen won!!! Way to go, baby! You rock!

Griffin really enjoyed the cupcakes afterwards!

We had such a nice time with you, Krystal and Jason. Thank you so much for everything! We really hope to see you soon, it is too bad that we live so far away from each other.

Christmas Trip - Day 2

Warning!!! Too many pictures!!!

Christmas Day finally came!!! We could open the presents! My awesome husband gave me the best present ever: a Nikon D40 camera with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AND 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED lenses. PLUS Photography lessons! I've been wanting to learn photography for so-so long! My wonderful parents-in-law gave me a tripod and a 4GB card for the camera! Thank you so much baby, Mom, and Dad!

Stephen has been wanting some type of video game console for very-very long, but we always agreed that it would take up too much of our time. (Actually, I did not want to share my time with Stephen). Well, I decided to stop being selfish and I got Stephen a Wii this year. He really seems to enjoy it! I am so glad.

We got and gave lots of other presents and we are grateful for all the presents that we received! Thank you, Grandmother, Mom, Dad, Laurin, and Patrick! You guys are wonderful!

As you can imagine Daniel got lots of things too. Here is Daniel playing with his new Mega Blocks truck and a bag full of Mega Blocks:

After we were done opening the presents, I caught all the Cole boys hanging out together:

Patrick has two dogs, and Daniel LOVED them. Especially, the smaller one - Zouie. He would touch her with one finger and them squeal in delight!

We had a wonderful Christmas lunch complete with Turkey, Ham, Green Bean casserole, dressing, Ambrosia, and other tasty treats. Thank you Mom!

After everybody took a nap, we went to see Stephen's Aunt Judy and Granny. Here is Daniel with Granny:

Judy and her Granddaughter Danielle really seemed to enjoy the chocolates we brought them:

Stephen's cousin Dana did not let Daniel off her arms the whole time she was there. I think she misses the baby smell and feel (her children are 12 and 18).

I've never met Judy's husband Larry before, he is such a hoot! He is an avid hunter and an ex-hippie, he showed me bunch of pictures of him on his chopper years ago. He is too funny, he made me almost cry with laughter!

Christmas Trip - Day 1

OK, I've started a recount of our Christmas holidays a few times and every time I would put it off because I have so much to talk about. I am going to seperate the days so that the posts are not toooooooo long :) So here it goes:

This year we went to Shreveport, Louisiana for Christmas. After much deliberation and consideration we decided to drive through the night so that Daniel would sleep and make it a little easier on us. Well, Daniel did great on the trip there. We took off at about 7pm Eastern time on Tuesday night and Daniel fell asleep right away. He woke up when we stopped for the first time at about 8:30pm and we fed him dinner. As soon as we started driving again he fell asleep. He did wake up every time we stopped after that but never cried or fussed, just looked around. The drive was not bad at all, just so long! We were so tired! I felt so bad for Stephen, he had to work that Tuesday and he stayed up for the whole drive. It took us about 11 hours to do the 615 miles from our house to Stephen's Grandmother Cole's house in Shreveport. But we did it!

We spent the Christmas Eve together at Grandmother's house. Daniel spent the first half-an-hour after we got there just looking around and getting to know his surroundings and people. After a short while he became completely comfortable and started playing with everybody.

After a while Dad, Mom, Stephen, Daniel and I went to the Red River broadwalk mall for lunch and a little shopping.

Grandmother and Mom went above and beyond decorating the house and the outside for Christmas. The house looked wonderful! Thank you Mom and Grandmother!

Whew! First Christmas post down, just three more to go! Blogging is hard, but I want to keep the memories ;)

Christmas is a week away...and counting!

I moved to the United States from Ukraine 10 years ago next Tuesday the 23rd. Growing up in Soviet Union, where all religion was prohibited, we did not celebrate Christmas. And even if we did, the Russian Orthodox Christmas is on January 7th. Plus, half of my family is Jewish (so now they celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year). All this amounts to the fact that we did not have Christmas or Hanukkah traditions in my household. Our big holiday was always New Year. That is when Father Frost would come with his Granddaughter to deliver presents for the kids. We would also put up a New Years tree, and have big late night family dinners to meet the New Year and toast with Champagne.

Over the years, especially since I met Stephen, Christmas has become more and more important to me. It is a time to see family, celebrate together, and of course exchange gifts :) I LOVE getting and giving gifts. I tend to think hard about gifts I get for different people, and get very excited for them to open the presents and see if they like the gifts as much as I though they would. In fact, I have been known to give the gift to the person ahead of time because I was so excited. I hate waiting.

Stephen just called me to tease me that he just bought my gift. And will have it with him when he gets home today. Although I do have a pretty good idea of what it is, I might have to sneak a peak at it, or maybe even play with it. If I do, I might post about it or I might not :) (Lets keep Stephen on his toes :) )

This year, the Christmas holiday is going to be extra special because we have Daniel now, and it is his First Christmas. I really did not think much about it, until I saw how excited Stephen and the rest of his family are. Stephen's grandmother has gone above and beyond with decorating her house and getting ready for us to arrive. Dad (Stephen's father) has sent us pictures of the outside and it looks so festive and beautiful. I think everybody in Shreveport has been ready to see us for weeks. I cannot wait to go!

Additionally, we are going to get to see lots of our cousins from Mom's (Stephen's mother's) side of the family. They are all so much fun. Let me just say that our visit will include a cookie icing-off competition. I will post more about that after we go see them.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year everybody! I hope you have safe and joyful holidays with your loved ones!

Christmas party

Saturday was the third time since Daniel was born that Stephen and I went out without the baby. We went to a Christmas party thrown by the newly rediscovered friends that Stephen knew back in Auburn. There were about 50 people there. Stephen saw a lot of his close friends from years ago, he really enjoyed catching up and I think that we have a new group of friends now. Everybody was very nice, friendly, and interesting.

At the party we also played Secret Santa. I went and bought two $20 gifts so both Stephen and I could participate. The game was complete with Santa (all of us had to sit on his lap to open presents) and Elf - the man of the house himself, wearing tights and Christmas sweater and hat. It was too funny:

Here is Stephen with Santa and his "little helper"

And guess what Stephen won (plus a 70's compilation CD):

I tried and tried to get somebody to steal Stephen's present, but for some reason nobody would :(

I, of course, had to choose the BIGGEST gift there :)

It was a toy surfer with a remote control, it was awesome. And guess what? Somebody stole it! All in good fun and within the rules of the game, but I was still mad!!! I had to pick another, and got a set of Christmas candles: two snowmen, a Christmas tree, and a pine cone.

Santa is coming to town

Yesterday we took Daniel to see Santa. Daniel was not scared or nervous about Santa, just very interested. He really liked Santa's beard, especially pulling on it. The lady that was taking the pictures had really hard time making Daniel look at the camera. And he would NOT smile. He is always smiling, I think this is one of the first pictures we have with Daniel not smiling. Anyways, without further ado...

Fun filled weekend

A few weeks ago Stephen registered with Facebook and discovered that many of his friends from Auburn live in Atlanta. Stephen, Daniel and I met with three of them on Friday night for some barbecue. I was a little apprehensive about being present when such old friends meet up since they usually talk about people they knew back then and little more. Luckily, my fears were completely unwarranted. We had a very nice time with friends. I will be happy to become closer with any one of them again. And they even offered to baby sit! As a plus, the barbecue was extremely delicious.

This is exactly what we wanted when we decided to move down south. When we lived in New York, we found it hard to establish a busy social life for ourselves. Our social life was pretty decent before Daniel was born but rapidly deteriorated after the birth of the baby, since it is so hard to travel around New York with a baby. Even before the baby, it was sometimes hard to work out the logistics of meeting up with people. For example, I had a girlfriend that lived less than five miles from me. By car, it would have taken me about 10 minutes to get to her place, but using the subway system I had to take 2 trains or buses and spend 30 minutes to an hour depending on the time of the year. In Atlanta it is so much easier. We pile up in a car and go. It does not matter if our friends live 2 miles or 20 miles from us, it is easy! And I am loving it, loving my car, and our growing social life.

Unfortunately, once again, my camera remained in the bag for the whole evening, so I have no pictures to share. Luckily, one of the girls we met with is having a Christmas party at her house next weekend. Hopefully, I will not forget to bust out my camera then.

Let me get back to our weekend. On Saturday, we invited my mother and grandmother over and we built our very first Gingerbread house. It was a fun experience for all of us. I think it will become our new family tradition. This year Daniel was just trying to grab everything within his reach (and beyond). Hopefully, next year he will be able to help us decorate. Oh, let me tell you a big secret, Stephen is really good at decorating with icing. I was so surprised, please do not tell him I told you :)

On Sunday, we decorated our Christmas tree and I finished wrapping up presents. I am pretty impressed with myself as I am almost finished with my Christmas shopping. In fact, I have only three presents to buy now (I have nine of them wrapped already). And guess who is left on my list - Stephen and Daniel. You would think that I would buy those presents first, would not you? I just see so many different options of presents, and it is so hard to decide, especially for Daniel. I guess I should just go ahead and buy him a toy and be done with it. I think I just might do it.

I will leave you with a crappy picture of our Christmas tree. I promise our tree looks much more beautiful in real life. I really got to figure out my camera. Most of my pictures come out blurry or out of focus or with the colors all wrong. Any suggestions?