Dear Santa

I've been good this year Santa

Part time elf for hire

Tender Tennessee Christmas

I love it.  Christmas feels complete when spent with our family in Tennessee.  Yummy ham.  Warm smiles and hugs.  Lots of catching up about work, school, boyfriends :)

Sandy and Vickie are incredible with Van.  They showered him with endless attention. Van is pretty much spoiled by his TN family.

Sandy and Vickie ready to give lots of kisses

Hayden and Uncle Chris - two cuties

and two goofballs

 

3 men and a kitty cat

 

Go together like peas and carrots

Hayden, Brittney, and Van are ready for the gift extravaganza

We tried a new gifting this year to only include the grandkids.  It was great to focus our time towards family.  I think everyone enjoyed it.  Sandy likes to bend the rules and surprised the big kids with pump action marshallow shooters.  A-W-E-S-O-M-E.  I mean this is an ingenious invention.  Safe projectile shooting.  No safety goggles needed. Yes!  We had so much fun that I forgot about the camera.  Sorry no pictures of the marshmallow warfare and it was war indeed.

Christmas 2009

But wait there's more.  Pirating internet access from the neighbors gets rather low wireless signal.  Stay tuned.

White Wonderland II

What does any kid want to do with a snow covered hilltop?

Sled down Granddaddy's front yard of course.

Look Mom, no hands!

Let's do that again Dad!

Can you see the exhilaration in Van's eyes?

And the next best thing to do with all this snow....

True to a scientist's nature. Experiment on the first attempt.

Proof of concept

 Frosty is alive

Baby it's cold outside

Mom's lil' winter bear

Baby luvs with his Dad

White Wonderland

Tennessee did not diappoint this year.  Five inches of beautiful snow yesterday and it's still coming down this morning.  Winter white Christmas for us.  Yippeee.  Of course, I say this after a stressful night.  Power went out hours into the first down fall of snow.  Inside temperature dropping fast.  Power came back on.  Whew.  A few hours later, we are sitting in candlelight again.  Utility company advises to hunker down because second outage means a more complicated and delayed fix.  Van and I snuggled under layers of blankets.  He wasn't too happy about it which means mom got no sleep.  Heat kicked on at 7am.  Here is what we woke up to....

Don't you just want to dive belly first into this stuff? Saturday

 Hilltop view from Granddaddy's front porch on Frideh

 Within a few hours later Frideh

Brrrr.  Somone lost his way during his migration route.  He heard about the TN moonshine.

Christmas

The season is here.  Are you ready?  I'm not.  I have my Cmas decorations up.... but the storages boxes need to be returned to the attic.  oops.  We have the outdoor lights ready to install... but it rained, then it snowed, then it's tooooo cold.  darn.  I already predict that I will be that mom who is wrapping presents at 3am on Cmas eve.  I still don't know what to get Van for Cmas.  yikes!  Van- Mom and Dad will get better with practice. But all that stuff isn't about Cmas.  It's about this....

Little brown baby Jesus - Peruvian style

One of my all time favorite gifts- Thank you Sartaj!

10 More Days

Is Tennessee ready for this

Signs

I don't believe that there are only 12 differents types of people in the world described by the astrological zodiac signs and neither do my people.  Instead, there are 12 animals (earthly signs)  in the vietnamese lunar calendar and 10 heavenly stems in a 60 year cycle.  So, there are at least 60 different types of people in the world :) 

We collect figurines of our earthly signs.  My mom is a monkey.  My dad is a tiger. Nghia is a rooster.  Lilly is a pig.  Gigi is a rat (we say mouse to be polite).  Woodie is a dog.  Cole is a snake.  Jonas is a ram.  I'm a cat.  Chis and Van are buffalos.  Fitzgerald will always be my puppy. 

Want to know your vietnamese sign?  click here

A dog. A cat. And two buffalos

Thanksgiving Part 2

Holiday season is here!  Family, food, friends, food, and more food.  I love that feeling of home for the holidays.  Things haven't changed since I was a kid at my parent's home.  We lounge about all day.  Talk, nibble on food, take pictures, feast, sit around because we're too full from eating.  It is leisure central.  My parent's home is familiar and warm.  I walk in the house and instantly return to my childhood - my mom's home cooking, my dad's shuffling feet, Nghia tapping on the keyboard.  It was a good Thanksgiving.  I hope to create the same warm fuzzies for Van.

Can't get enough of his aunties

Oops, we did it again

When Cole was a baby we fooled him to thinking that mom was always around.  All 3 of us wore a white top and the same perfume.  We went shopping  while caring for Cole and he was none the wiser.  Coincidentally, we wore the same color on Thanksgiving.  Weird sister thing.  We plan to do this again to Van.  Momma needs a new pair of shoes. Hee hee!

Gobble, gobble, yum

The classic pose

Maddie is camera ready

Pudge is camera ready

So not camera ready

A First

Thanksgiving

We've kicked off the holiday season with our friends' Thankgiving celebration.  We're a growing clan with all our kids, puppies, and husbands.  We enjoyed the day with stuffed bellies and lots of laughter. 

Trae, Cathie, Kegan, Van , and Mia

Baked apples with sweet potato stuffing yummm - Thank you Erin, Kegan, and Abigail

Sonya's warm touches to hosting this year's festivity

After food and fun, the men retreat to Carlos' man cave

TGIF

I'm new at this blogging gig.  Just added two features at the top right corner of the web page.  Ok- Chris did it for me.  First is the RSS feed - links you to updated posts accessed from your reader service (Google reader). Basically, you have one point of access to all the places you have subscribe to.  Yes, my sentence ended with a preposition. Wiki speak:
"RSS (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format"

For more info: BBC speak
 
Second is the subscribe via email. Obviously it enables you to receive email alerts of new posts from this blog.

BTW, it's FRIDAY!

Gotcha

Nghia is always the first to dodge a camera.  Our family albums are confettied with brushy permed hairdos, embarassing 90s outfits, and lots of photos of my mom posing next to flowers.  Nghia is usually behind the camera but not this time :)

Missed Again

I'm still off the mark with Van's hat size.  grr.

You're killin' me Mom

Temperatures finaling dropped below 70F.  So, I just couldn't resist getting out Van's winter gear.  hee hee

Why must she do this to me

Adverse Event

This should have clued us into what would happen next...

Pears in the morning

Pears spewing onto the floor.  Eeew.

Van is not a fan of pears, apparently

But he'll eat octopus.  Dats my bebe

Yes, I plan to get full use of that Cmas hat

Too early for Cmas

Guessing Van's size while he was in utero was kind of tricky.  I got it right for his Halloween outfit but way off for his Cmas outfit hat.  So, it's Cmas in Nov.

Luv dis bebe

I just left a surprise in my pants for Daddy