Christmas!

Our Christmas celebrations began after school on Thursday, making gingerbread houses at the Garrows.

Wishing for a White Christmas, we got a couple inches of heavy, wet snow on Friday and took advantage of the opportunity to build our first snowman of the season.

Decorating our tree Friday night!

Christmas Eve day at Tyler's house, followed by dinner at the Peters'.

Letter, cookie and milk for Santa!

We're ready!

Opening stockings while the sunporch warmed up.

Then, onto the Big Gifts!

One pooped out kiddo!

Pumpkin Cereal-Bowl, the miracle hamster. I like to think I brought her back from the dead last night. Turns out that the room I keep her in to protect her from the Jaws of Death (Zoe) got too cold, and she went into hibernation. We thought she was dead. They call me the Hamster-Whisperer :-)

Thanksgiving and 4th Birthday!

Having trouble writing picture captions on this blog, so I'll put all the text here at the beginning.

Here are a bunch of pictures, in chronological order, of our trip to RI and MA for Thanksgiving, which included birthday celebration #1 for Elijah-- a "family" party at my sister Paula's house! Birthday party #2 was cupcakes and songs at Miss Tammy's house (daycare) and #3 was back home on the evening of Elijah's birthday with presents and a birthday cookie. Celebration #4 was Elijah's special day at Poker Hill School today (preschool), where he was presented with that amazing birthday card (approx. 4' X 4'...for perspective, it is hanging from our dining room picture window in this photo), shared his birthday book with the group, and got to pick some special birthday songs. The final picture is Elijah working hard on his Thank You cards. He'll have even more to make after his 5th (and final--- finally!) birthday party on Sunday- his "friend" party!

Thank you everyone for the well-wishes, cards, gifts, money(!) and special phone calls and songs! I think Elijah is feeling very loved this week :-)

Grossology

Fitting right in with our Sciency Saturdays, today we went to the ECHO Center to see their back-by-popular-demand exhibit called "Grossology." The whole concept is gross things about the human body. There were nasty things to smell, mucousy things to touch, and hands-on exhibits about infections, belching, vomit and gas-passing.

A giant "Operation" game.

This one was all about gas.

The "Drippy Faucet" (mucous)

And finally, the burps and belches.

It was an aptly-named exhibit, and (as you might imagine), Elijah enjoyed it IMMENSELY.