thanksgiving weekend

Thanksgiving always means a long weekend with at least one day spent with family on one side or the other. This year it meant two days at my Mom's house. It was a bittersweet time for me, since it's the first of the 'big' holidays since my Dad's passing.

The visit was a good one though. It was really cool to see that Riley remembers his grandma now. Both Mom and I really enjoyed that. It's cool that he enjoys going to her house as well (there's so much to get into there!) Another way to tell that he feels comfortable there...he sleeps normally! Being away from home generally screws up his sleep schedule, but not so this time around. He actually slept until seven on Friday morning!

We already posted a couple of things from the visit (dancing to the Jonas Bros. and standing raptly before Bob...) Here are a couple more shots:

Riley had fun playing with cousins Britney and Daniella:















Eating the very yummy squash apple bisque for Thanksgiving lunch:















We were back home on Saturday. We spent a large portion of the day getting into the "Christmas Spirit." In the morning we went to Target to get Christmas pictures taken. Riley wasn't as cooperative as usual and the photographer made us all sit on the floor, but we still got a couple of decent pictures. No solo shots for our boy this year though, he just wouldn't have it. At any rate, the Christmas card is in the works.

Later on we went to get our Christmas tree. Riley is very excited about the tree this year. He loves lights of course and ornaments have become a big fave as well. Shelby got some plastic ornaments so we don't have to worry about broken glass. Riley likes to point to them and say "Ball!" Most of them are ball shaped... Balls also happen to be his current favorite thing. Some tree pictures:

Where will I put this?















This'll go here.















The tree




















A picture of Riley in front of the just lit tree:















We'll be heading across the country to Washington for Christmas this year, so we figured we'd do the 'Four Weeks of Christmas' this year with Riley's gifts. So he got to open his first gift last Saturday. It was really funny, we put the gift in front of him (wrapped of course) and he didn't know what to do with it. So I made a little hole in the paper to give him the idea that he needed to tear it open...and he wouldn't (at first.) He seemed to think that he'd be doing something wrong by ripping the wrapping paper. I ripped it a little more then he started to see the toy underneath and that was all it took. He got into the spirit of the moment. Some pictures:

Rip it Riley!















He loves pop-up toys















I think he got the idea because he saw some other, still wrapped gifts and wanted to have at them. We had to tell him to wait...

I think giving gifts to our boy will be a lot more fun from here on out.


Jonathan