But you can only sift through Christmas decorations and half empty packages so long, so here are some pictures of our holiday!
My Nanny is very sick these days and Christmas this year was so much about her and spending time with her. 
She has 5 great grands and 3 of them are babies as you can see.
This was the 3rd gift exchanging day for us and Caleb is just now coming down off of his present-opening high! He asked several times in the last week and a half if he was getting more presents! 
Christmas Dinner at my parents' house.
Caleb and my mom made pinecone birdfeeders which we hung in a tree outside her kitchen window. A few days later we watched some cardinals try to eat from them, but a fat blue jay kept dive-bombing them and saving the seeds for himself!
The weather was really nice while we were there. Caleb and I traced each other's outlines in chalk. I thought he did a great job, my wrists are a bit thin though!
Oh the siren song of the piano! Both kids were mesmer-ized!
Caleb introducing Annalise to the Fontenini nativity set.
My dad with Annalise
This bell is from a game called Pit. It's a card game based on the stock market and my parents played it with some family on the day after Christmas in 1976. How do I know that? I was born the very next day and my mom has always credited this bell's dinging for inducing her labor(I wasn't due for another 2 weeks or so). She says I was probably curious as to all the noise!
My brother has a "real job", but he really is in a band on the side. Here's him and Caleb having a duet.
On the way back we stopped in Mobile to visit some of my relatives. My dad's cousin Karen has always been in a wheelchair and Caleb is so incredibly outspoken right now that I figured he would be very curious about it and pepper her with questions. But he did not! Instead he acted as it he didn't even notice it...until she offered to give him a ride! 
The ride back...what a long long way. It's not as fun as the ride there, with a dirty van and old snacks and everyone impatient to be home it seems twice as long!On the ride up I had a very "bad mom" episode. We stayed at a hotel on the way and it had a breakfast room, so the kids and I went there while Rob took care of Mako. There was no high chair, and Annalise is relatively steady, so I sat her in a regular chair and put chairs all around it to keep her from falling out. We did fine until Rob got there and we were all sitting for breakfast and the barrier chairs were need for sitting, so of course she fell out! THEN we all went back to the room and I took Caleb to the bathroom to brush his teeth, and I thought Rob had Annalise, he thought she was with me. Well she was in the room, but the door didn't shut all the way and with both our backs turned, she opened it up and walked into the hallway. A stranger (who had witnessed the chair episode as well) knocked on the door and I heard him tell Rob, "Your daughter's in the hallway" and I thought, he must be mistaken! There must be some other girl wandering the hallway...but it was her! Fortnuately, a very nice cleaning lady was also in the hallway watching everything. At least then I felt like she wouldn't have done something extremely dangerous!
I sort of redeemed myself on the ride back - or Caleb made me pay for it, however you want to look at it. The child was not sick, unless he was homesick, but for whatever reason he threw up in his carseat. I had moved him to the back row and I was sitting in the 2nd row next to Annalise helping them with a meal and my first instinct was to catch it in my hand! Which was no where near big enough and it got all over his carseat and clothes. We pulled over and I cleaned him and it with baby wipes and he rode home in mismatched laundry in a coverless carseat.
We all have those nightmare parenting episodes. I lost Ron in a store once and didn't know he was gone. I kept hearing a woman say, "We'll find your mommy." I kept thinking what kind of a mother would lose her child? Was I ever embarassed to find out it was me!
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