Almost home

I considered coming up with some sort of pithy "12 Days of Christmas" style post to describe our whirlwind trip, but to be honest I am too tired!
We are in a hotel in Ohio and hope to be home tomorrow. It was a lovely trip; too short and too busy, but wonderful, as most of my trips to the northeast tend to be. We are coming home with memories of celebrating with just about every family member that we have on the east coast (Patrick and I are probably also carrying a few extra pounds from all of the celebrating).
The girls have enough new toys, books, and clothes to last them quite a while, including Mariel's American Girl Doll and Noella's Leap Pad Laptop computer from Santa. Holden also got lots of clothes, toys, and books. Our baby boy got something that none of the rest of us can compete with: since we started our journey on the 20th he has also gotten his first two teeth.
Pictures to follow some day...

And Away We Go!


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Our journey begins... 10 days, many stops, way too many things to fit into the car, and a whole stack of Christmas music CDs to torture Patrick with.

Mariel's New Computer
Mariel found a paper frame with princesses on it and decided to turn it into her very own princess laptop.  She designed the keyboard with a few special modifications. 

There are "sad" and "happy" buttons if you like or do not like something, a "no" for quick corrections, a macaroni and cheese button (top right, next to the happy button- because those two things clearly go together), and on the bottom row are buttons for: peas, bacon, "Mariel" (in case you need a shortcut to insert her name into a story), cake, soup, and cheese.

Patrick and I are interested in having her design some computers for us.  I think that I would be willing to pay quite a bit extra for an instant cake feature on my computer.

More Noella-isms

Flavrite = favorite.  Noella tells me "This is my flavrite song" every time a new song comes on the radio. 
The Grunch= Noella's flavrite movie.
Turgot= forgot.  As in, "Mom, you turgot to let me watch the Grunch today!"
Flamly= family.  She loves her flamly.  She is, however, a little concerned that we are about to embark on a 10 day trek across the country with only her immediate flamly in the car.  I have explained that we really cannot fit our friends in the car along with our luggage and the five of us, and I think that she understands.  She is very excited to visit our extended flamly across the northeast and has already tried to pack several times.  At the top of her list: cereal.  It is her flavrite.

7 months old

 Holden is 7 months old and, as you can see, very crafty.  This is his most recent project from school- a special jar of hot chocolate for Christmas.  The teachers are very creative with handprints and footprints!

Holden absolutely would not lay down for a full body shot, so we settled for a sitting up photo with Puffalump.  He is too busy for holding still these days!