Happy new year!

Trying to ring in the new year on a healthier note, but so far Clara has an ear infection, Pete has a fever and Frederick has the hiccups.

Christmas Day

Christmas Morning...

 And Christmas afternoon...

A Message From Frederick

Christmas Eve

Here are some of the things we've done leading up to Christmas...

Gingerbread house: 

 Sugar cookies:

 Santa foot rattle:

 Christkindlemarket:

 Treehouse decorating:

 Henry's Winter Sing:

 Solstice/End Of The World party:

 And tonight...we went to church, then to a party, then watched The Grinch and read Christmas Quiet and The Night Before Christmas. Now we're watching Christmas movies, trying to keep a fire going, and waiting to make sure the big kids are truly asleep....

Merry Christmas!

Pajama day

We were all up a little late last night. We had some friends over for a party (pictures to come). So this morning we declared a pajama day. Now we're watching Miracle on 34th Street.

Santa!

Clara points to Frederick and says to Santa "he has you on his shirt!"

In a few years I suppose this will be wrestling instead of cuddling.

Braces!

Despite the fact that Henry's expander didn't want to stay cemented in, it seems to have done its job. Now we're on phase two!

Bosch!

Dad installs our new dishwasher while Pete supervises.

Christmassy

We're trying to squeeze every Christmassy moment we can into the season. There are so many wonderful things to do! A few nights ago we made salt-dough ornaments and last night we painted them. We tried to do a hand and a footprint of Fredericks. When Pete pressed Frederick's little foot into the dough, it left behind a bit of toe fuzz. It was cute because he's a baby. 

 This morning we got up early and went downtown to the old Marshall Field's (now Macy's) to try to get into the Walnut Room for a meal. I say 'try' because the wait can get up to 3 hours long. We were there early enough to get a table almost immediately, and right next to the tree!

 On our way out, we dropped some notes to Santa into the special mailbox.

 Once we found our way outside we wandered around to look at the windows. It's really the first time we've taken the kids down to see them. Henry was there once when he was a little baby...either his first or 2nd Christmas, I'm not sure which without look back. It was still Marshall Field's then.

Today is the first day of Hannukah. We're going to cook a brisket, make some latkes (we do live in Northbrook, after all...) and maybe watch Elf and eat Christmas cookies!

Clara reads to Frederick while Henry takes his bath and we wait for Dad to get home from work. It's a pretty good time.

It was a mild-weathered trip to the tree farm this year, but Frederick bundled up none-the-less.

Cousins

Frederick got to meet his birth-month-sharing-cousin Maeve last week. Here's the very first picture of them together. They were both sleepy. 

 Liz and I were excited to meet each other's babies. This is our first attempt at a picture with all 5 cousins.

 We were gathered in Deerfield for a baby open-house. Clara was more interested in carrying her cousin Vivian around.

 Frederick and Maeve slept for the 3 hours or so that visitors were around. But they woke for a bit of together time afterwards.

 Maeve was born 12 days before Frederick. It's going to be interesting to watch them develop over these first couple of years.

 The cousins all seem to like each other so far.

A few days later was Henry's birthday. We had a fun breakfast at Walker Brothers before Pete had to go to work. He came home early and Henry was very excited to open his 'big' gift from us. It was a remote control car. That night we went to Barnaby's and met up with Grandma, Bampa, Liz and the two little cousins. 

Henry had requested a mohawk for the celebration. He then spent the whole evening pouting at me for asking him to put his book away. 

The next day was Thanksgiving. Frederick dressed up.

 The girls helped Grandma in the kitchen...mostly by eating the breads they were supposed to be putting on the tray.

 The turkey was on the table.

 Frederick hung out with Bampa, waiting for dinner.

 Henry and Clara assembled some sort of tent city in the basement.

 I'm including this photo just because I think Pete looks so cute in it.

 The following several photos show the progression of trying to get a nice picture of all 5 cousins together:

 We ended up with a pretty nice one. You'll also notice Vivian's broccoli lovie in the picture. Yes- we bought her that.

 Again we tried for some pictures of al 5 kids.

 Here's my favorite from the day:

Thanksgiving night we drove to Iowa City so we could catch Will and Sandy before they left for Colorado. It was their first time meeting Frederick. We also wanted to go to a football game, even with the terrible season the Hawks have had. It was very very cold. 

 Henry was at the game with his Grandpa, but their seats were in the endzone in the shade with the wind in their faces. Dad called me during the first quarter to say Henry was pretty miserable. We brought him down to our seats (Mom's seats) to try and find some warmth between us. It worked for a bit. We were all pretty frozen by the last quarter and we did leave a little early.

We had dinner at Dad and Kathie's that night to celebrate Henry's birthday (and also to eat some yummy ham and Thanksgiving leftovers). Dad picked out this book, all about gross stuff, for Henry. They both got quite a kick out of such sections as "ways to say you have to go to the bathroom". But I like this photo best for Clara and Eleanor.