A Late Christmas in Seattle

While we spent the Christmas holiday in Philadelphia, it seems as if Santa made a pit-stop in Seattle and left a couple of presents for Evan. He also had a number of presents from generous friends and family members that he hadn't opened. We felt lucky to have a special second Christmas with the three of us.

Christmas in Philadelphia

We headed out to Philadelphia to visit family and celebrate Evan's second Christmas. Evan had a great time looking at the Christmas trees, opening his presents and playing with his grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles. We took so many pictures during the trip - here are a few for your viewing pleasure. Click here if you want to see all of them.

Who would have guessed this toy would be a hit?

As we're gearing up for the holidays Jill has been do a lot of wrapping, which leaves a lot wrapping paper tubes. Out of all of the toys we have in the house Evan prefers playing with the wrapping paper tubes. Sometime he takes small balls or plastic animals and slides them through the tube. Other times he puts the tube up to his mouth and uses it like a megaphone.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

I like to think that Evan has always been a bit musical. One of his favorite things to do is listen to Jill and me sing him songs. His current favorite is the "Itsy Bitsy Spider". He does quite a good job with the hand motions. Here he is making the spider crawl up the spout.

This time there was snow

Evan, Jill and I went to Park City this past weekend with a few of our friends. Unlike when we visited over Thanksgiving Utah was covered in snow this time. We arrived to a house with no power (ugh!) but thanks to the power company we were up and running within a few hours. We took Evan outside and let him walk around in the snow. At first he didn't like it at all, but over the course of the trip he warmed up to it and seemed to be enjoying himself by the end. We even took him sledding down the driveway which he really enjoyed. We took a whole bunch of pictures -- take a look.

Decorating the tree

The holidays are upon us and we thought we'd give Evan a shot at helping decorate the tree this year.

It turns out Evan is scared of Christmas trees and this is about as close as he'll get to it. Guess we didn't need that new baby gate to keep him away after all.

After a few days he seems to be warming up to it and will now sit in front of it for a few seconds. Happy holidays!

The countdown has begun

December has begun and along with it the Christmas season. Jill took out the Advent calendar her sister made for her. It looks exactly like the Advent calendar Jill, Jennifer, and Jeffrey used when they were young. Evan is old enough now to help hang the ornaments on the tree counting down the days until Christmas. We think as he grows older the calendar will have a special place in his heart just as it did for the Nansteel children.

He's Better

Evan turned the corner yesterday and seemed to be back at full strength today. He's back to eating everything that's not nailed down and was a pleasure to be around today. Unfortunately yesterday was one of those rare days in Seattle when we get snow and we weren't able to go outside with Evan and show it to him. I'm hoping that there will be snow he can see later this week when we venture out to Park City.