At the Lake

I'll try to do a "real" update with a bunch more Christmas pics soon. For now, here are a couple of cute shots from Laura and Brett's home on Ross Lake.

Christmas with the Olsons

On Saturday we spent the morning having brunch at cousin Nancy's house and then headed over to cousin Andy's house for Christmas with the Olson family. Here are a couple of cute shots from the festivities.


Getting some cuddles with Nancy after brunch on Saturday morning.


Hanging out with Nick and Laura. That big arm looks pretty comfy!



Perfectly happy snuggling with Auntie Gerry.


And because I know they read the blog, I had to put in this (blurry) gem for Brian and Jamie. Don't take it personally, Brian!

Amery and Santa

Amery met Santa today! Amery and I, along with Grandma and Aunt Laura, bundled up and headed downtown to Macy's to see the annual Christmas display and visit with Santa. Amery's still not so sure about all the layers that are required for an outing in Minneapolis.

We have a picture with "awake Santa" but I haven't had a chance to scan it yet. I was able to snap a picture with my own camera of Santa goofing around.

Greetings from the Great White North!

Amery and I made it safely to Minnesota yesterday. He did pretty good on the two flights although I pretty much had to bounce him non-stop or he would fuss at me. Luckily I had grandmothers next to me on both flights.

While the flights were relatively uneventful, the drive from the airport to my parents' house was another story entirely. It was a total nightmare. We left the airport at 3:30 and it had just started to snow. The snow combined with rush-hour made for some of the worst traffic I have ever experienced in my life. Ever. Ever. It is a half-hour drive from the airport to my parents' house. It took three hours. Amery was starving but was so upset at all the travel that he would not take a bottle all bundled up in his car seat. I didn't want to take him out to nurse him because obviously that's dangerous, and that would have been really hard anyway. After over an hour on the road, I couldn't take it anymore. We were going 2 MPH or we were stopped so I finally pulled him out of the seat for 5 minutes to strip off his fleece snowsuit and give him the bottle. After that he calmed down a bit. I had to rock the car seat constantly for the rest of the trip home.

Today has been a much better day although he has decided grandma and grandpa's house is way too interesting to take a nap. Awesome. We managed to capture one happy moment:

The Year of the Dragon

We celebrated Christmas with Jon's family on Saturday since we will be in Minneapolis on Christmas day this year. After a big lasagna dinner (yum) we exchanged gifts. Amery received a vintage 1960s rocking dragon that was restored by our sister-in-law, Jennifer, and her mom. It's too big for him right now of course, but how cool will it be when he's big enough? I'll tell you now, it will be very cool.





The rest of the evening was spent hanging out with cousins Jax and Jade. Sorry Jax, I had one good picture of Jade and one good picture of you and Jade won this round:


We also spent some time giggling at Grampy:

He loves the hat. He hates the hat.

Amery got a new hat for our Christmas trip to Minnesota. He's hot-cold on the idea.




He also decided he wanted Papa to join him in the bathtub this morning:

Long Johns

Since it's pretty chilly here for Texas this morning (36 degrees!) Amery decided to get ready for our trip up to Minnesota in a couple of weeks by sporting his raccoon long johns from Aunt Laura and Uncle Brett.

We put up the Christmas decorations last Saturday and Amery was clearly stoked about it: