John's birthday

Larry's brother John's birthday is just a few days before Christmas, so we got together on the Saturday before the holiday to celebrate. We all enjoyed lunch at Benihana. Happy birthday, John!

Cousin Miranda was loving playing with Sara's hair


Our big group!


Gramma Daisy with her three great-grandkids, plus Billie, John, and Christal


Vicki and Megan

Fun outings

On the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend we took the trailer down to the beach for the day. The Tyners joined us for a cold but beautiful day.

I love Sara's hair like this. It's so ridiculous but so cute.


Ryan was shredding on Sara's trike


A week later Larry signed up for his annual Disney passport. The park was decorated for Christmas and looked beautiful!


A few days later Tanja and I took the kids to the mall for Santa pictures. The mall has a play area which was teeming with little kids.

Ryan loved the monster truck!


Sara loves her Tante Tanja and "Beak"

Cookie baking, 2009

On Thanksgiving evening I got into Larry's car and trekked out to Imperial, CA (near El Centro) to bake cookies with my good friend Karen. This was our third annual cookie-baking event, and we might have outdone ourselves. We prepared four different varieties and did a ton of decorating! I enjoy this so much every year. It's a wonderful bonding time, and it definitely helped to put us both in the Christmas spirit.

Look at all those cookies!



Karen did an especially beautiful job with the snowflakes this year


Cookies, cookies, cookies!

Thanksgiving

We did not decide on our Thanksgiving plans this year until the day before the holiday. At the last moment, my siblings and I all decided to get together at our place, and we actually pulled off quite a lovely day!

Baby Kyle and I


Alex and his baby boy


The table

I love Blake's tragic face here


Our little ham


Our little family

The girls

Brian brought Zoey over for a little playdate in late November. The boys went to the batting cages, and I stayed home and watched the girls.

Sara and Zoey are developing a fun little friendship. As in pretty much all her friendships at this point, Sara lets Zoey take the lead. It's really cute, because when it's just the two of them they interact quite a bit. I can't wait to see what happens as they grow.

Sara's second birthday

For Sara's actual birthday we took her to LA Zoo. It was a really warm day, and she enjoyed getting to see all the animals. She was starting to get sick that day but was definitely a trooper!

Enjoying her Barney doll in the morning


Checking out a snake up close and personal


Petting zoo


Zebra!

Trying out her new chair

Halloween night

For the second year in a row we went over to Tanja and Eric's house for Halloween. Just think: two years ago that night was the last night of my pregnancy with Sara!

All of the kids looked adorable, but we did not manage to get a picture of all four stateside cousins together.