Christmas in Virginia

We continued with our beach tradition for Christmas this year by meeting up with Mom, Dean, Jenny, Jon and Nicole in Virginia Beach. There were even a few furry friends who joined us. Ripley and her cousin Dexter got along quite well.

Ripley enjoyed being with everyone - and she loved the shiny wrapping paper that might have been more fun than her presents. There were walks on the beach, some letterboxing and just good family time. Ripley would like to thank her Grandma Janet and Grandpa Dean for renting such a fun place for us to all be together.

New Years at Cape May

We'll get to Christmas eventually, but a few words about New Years. We've been so lucky over the years to be able to meet up with our "architect" friends (even though not all of them are architects) in Cape May for New Years. The short version of the story is that Chad's college roommate Alan went to high school with Scott, who married Nina and had Cai and Von. Scott knew James from grad school (I think - and/or living together in Philly); Mare is James' sweetie and they live in NYC. I should ask again how Teresa knows Scott. Anyway, we all have a fun time together that involves a big house, walks on the beach, dominos and Guitar Hero/Rock Band.

This was Ripley's first new years in Cape May. We did a few new things - including going to Sunset Beach to watch the sun go down over the water. A fun adventure!

Inauguration Adventure

I am not sure where the month of January has gone, but here we are almost 2 weeks after the last update. And I still haven't written about the many Christmas celebrations and baby's first New Years. I've decided to start with the inauguration, and think I'll link most of the pictures to my Picasa account instead of trying to put them here.

I like to think we did inauguration-lite. No outside standing in the cold for hours for us. Chad's college friend Nicole had reservations at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant The Source in the Newseum, a museum on Pennsylvania Ave. in DC. She called the weekend before and asked if we wanted to join her - Chad had been pretty uninspired about going, but this was an invitation that could not be refused.

So we got up at 5:15 am on Tuesday, January 20th and made our way to the RI Metro stop. Little to no traffic on the BW Parkway heading down. We got the last spot in the lot after Chad sweet talked the manager into letting us into the lot. He directed us to a half spot where we ended up on the curb (see photo of this in the album).

We walked to Nicole's and hung out there for a few hours and watched the people standing on the mall freezing and realized we had made the right decision not take Ripley out in the cold for that long since she was just coming off some lung gunk. We took a bus downtown, did some walking and ended up at the restaurant right as the swearing in ceremony was about to start. We finally made our way through the mob at the Newseum and watched Obama take the oath on the TV screens in the bar. For the sake of full disclosure, I have to say that they would not turn on the sound, so when I say we watched it, this is accurate.

We headed up for our lunch reservation and had a leisurely time enjoying good food and good company. Ripley was an angel through the meal - eating, sleeping and playing without one bit of ruckus. At one point, I thought I saw Wolfgang Puck, but no one else had, but we asked the waiter and sure enough, it was him. We were good about not being stalkers, but at the end of our meal, he came over to us and we had to ask if we could take Ripley's picture with him (see photo on Picasa). He said he has a 2 year old that he could hook her up with!

After lunch, we went outside and tried to catch a glimpse of the parade through the glass windows of the restaurant and the barricades. I did have a good view of the car, but the Obamas were not walking when they passed where we were.

Our final stop of the day was to meet up with Drew, Naya and Cai who had been out on the mall in the cold and had come all the way from Los Angeles for the event. We didn't have nearly enough time to catch up but I am so glad the little ones got to see each other. They had both been troopers all day long. We headed home around 6:00 and were once again lucky in that we hit very little traffic. We have wonderful memories of an amazing historic event - it will be fun to share them with Ripley when she is older and can truly understand the significance of the day.

Thanks for reading the long update - I'll try to get back to Christmas over the weekend.

Santa is Coming to Town

I have a lot of updates to make, but in the meantime, here is a video from the pageant at Ripley's daycare. The babies in the infant room were the "reindeer" on Santa's "sleigh". I am definitely biased, but I think she is the most adorable reindeer of them all.

More Holiday Stuff

We spent our last weekend of 2008 at home doing fun holiday stuff. On Saturday, we went up to Hampden (a neighborhood in Baltimore) that has a 34th Street. Each year every person on the block decorates in quite the lavish fashion - and it is called A Miracle on 34th Street.

On Sunday, it was a gorgeous day, so after brunch with Lea and Bill, we walked over to the harbor in the big girl stroller (did I mention I left the small snap and go stroller in Texas!) which little girl has taken to quite well - and by taken to, I mean loves to gum. At the harbor, we saw:

Catching Up - Baby's First Trip to Texas

Without much of a break, we headed from Thanksgiving weekend to our first trip to Texas. Ripley and I flew out on Wednesday - they gave Chad a gate pass to get through security, even though he wasn't flying with us, so he was able to help us get settled. She did pretty darn good on the plane. I put her in the wrap and she slept, but she wouldn't let me sit down. Fortunately, it was smooth flying so we were able to stand in the aisle for about 1 1/2 hours of the flight while she dozed. I used my early present from Chad, an Ipod Touch to watch a couple of TV shows so it really wasn't all that bad.

We landed in San Antonio where Grandma Janet picked us up and took us to Cotulla to see Aunt Jill. We had a fun meal, stared at their Christmas tree, and visited Ben's the next day (Thursday). A short trip. but it was enough time to forget our snap and go stroller! We've been told it has found a good new home.

After San Antonio was Round Rock were we stayed with MiMi (Flossie) and met up with Aunt Jenny. Ripley also got to meet her Aunt Kelley, Uncle Dale and cousin Sara. Chad flew in on Friday an we stayed one more night before heading over to Hilltop on Saturday. We got to meet Ripley's new cousin Eric and see Emily, Freddy, Emily Marie, Jamie and Austin. Mom felt under the weather on Saturday night (we seem to bring sickness with us wherever we go), but Emily spearheading the production of some wonderful homemade flour tortillas, so we all ate well.

On Sunday, we drove down to The Woodlands where we stopped by to see Grandma Potter. I am pretty sure that neither she or Ripley will remember they met, but it meant so much to me that we have a few photos to show that they did. We'll be able to show the pictures to baby girl when she is older and tell her stories of her great grandmother.

Next stop was Uncle Jay and Aunt Marianne's where Matt and Margie joined us for some barbeque and soup. Ripley enjoyed looking at all of the trees in their backyard. She was a bit skittish around Uncle Jay at first, but finally warmed up to him. We have pictures now, so we'll try to show her the Texas family so the next time we visit, she'll know everyone.

Our last stop was Aunt Judy and Uncle Benny's in Pearland. Once again, we had a lovely meal and enjoyed visiting with everyone. Little girl really enjoyed hanging out with her second cousin Chelsea - they were even wearing the same color green! Ripley even got to open some early presents...and seemed to enjoy the paper as much as anything.

It was quite the whirlwind, but we enjoyed every minute of it and are so glad that Ripley got to meet everyone. I am not sure when we'll be back, but I think little girl would love a summer trip where she could float down the river.

Catching Up - Baby's First Thanksgiving

It has been a busy few weeks and will remain busy through the end of the year, but I finally think I have a bit of time to try to recreate some of our adventures. They started with Ripley's first Thanksgiving. We have some wonderful holiday traditions that we were so excited about sharing with little girl.

Things started with the trip north on 95. Usually a 2 1/2 hour trip, we know it is going to take longer on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but we were able to leave around 3:30 and pretty quickly made our way through Maryland, only to come to a screeching halt in Delaware. For those of you who do not travel this stretch of road, 12 miles of I-95 are in Delaware. Doesn't seem like so much, but this 12 miles took us 1 1/2 hours to traverse. Once in Jersey, things were fine again and we were there by 7:30 or so.

A wonderful Thanksgiving Thursday with good food and good company. Uncle Tom came over from Detroit. Matt, Christine and Deirdre joined us. But we did miss Uncle Culann and Aunt Carolyn who went up to Michigan this year. And Chuck was laid low upstairs with a stomach virus. I am glad Ripley will be too small to remember they weren't there - and we hope that we'll get back on track next year! Daddy took time away from carving the turkey to handout with ittle girl in her pretty dress.

Little girl got us up early on Friday, so it made sense to hit a Black Friday sale (for the first time) - to replace our camera which was taking way too many blurry photos. After a nice brunch, Chad, Ripley and I headed to Cape May, where we stayed at Congress Hall, a super cool historic hotel. We walked along the beach, did some shopping, played some skee ball at the local arcade, and ate dinner at our usual - Stumpos. We made it an early night, put baby to bed and followed in the tradition of watching a movie by watching Hancock (much better than we thought it was going to be).

On Saturday, we took our time and headed to the Cape May - Lewes Ferry to begin the ride home. It was baby's first boat ride and she had a wonderful time looking out the window at the ocean. We look forward to many many more Thanksgiving adventures.