Christmas and New Year's- I'm Almost Caught Up!

I feel very proud when people again and again inform me of how intelligent my child is...but then again, I get a bit frustrated when he moves things into the trash on my computer...or puts them into different folders. For example, some pictures I had on my desktop for this post and a previous post. Now I could just go back into iPhoto and download them back to the desktop, but no time for that. Maybe another day. Yes, maybe another day...

I hosted a small Christmas dinner for Jim's grandma, mom, and two brothers here on Bay Ave. We only had two chairs to put around the dinner table, but we had a stool, a bench, and a spackle bucket for our guests to sit on! Our beautiful dining room set does not fit into our small kitchen, so we have had to improvise until we solve this problem appropriately.

I know I'm taking the picture here, but where is Jim's grandma??

Drew made sure to get some snuggle time with 'the girls.' Here he is with Autumn.

All the kids at Christmas Eve dinner.

A new tricker by Sue-Sue and Drew-B-Doo.

Hugs for Grammajo.

So last Christmas it took us days and days to get through all of Drew's gifts. Of course being the only grandchild on all sides of the family he was spoiled no doubt, but really it took so long because he wanted to play with each toy after he opened it. No rush to get through his gifts. Well, this year Christmas was all about throwing away the wrapping paper for Drew. Here he sittiing with one of the many bags of garbage he collected.

One of Jim's...I mean Drew's favorite gifts was his microphone with a clapping and laughing track!

Anne, who I've known since 5th grade, came over to play with Drew one morning.

And Christy, who I've known since middle school came over to play one afternoon.

For New Year's we traveled down to Wayne, PA to hang family style with the Rotwitt's. They are a mixed religion family with Rebekkah being Jewish and Dough being some sort of Christian. So here is their tree.

Pretty impressive I think since Rebekkah is the one who got it herself. As Jim put it, "that is the most Jewish Christmas tree I've ever seen." But it's still better than us who sadly had no tree in our new home- no room with the living room still full of boxes at that point!

Drew and Jacob had fun playing together...I mean they worked hard at practicing sharing toys and parents. We had fun watching them in Jacob's neat, tidy, large, and well stocked playroom! Here is Jacob...the king of his castle! He is standing on top of his car garage. Drew used to do that too!
The Rotwitt's had some plumbing problems, so they had to call in some plumbers while we were there...luckily Drew and Jim make house calls- real cheap!

What did I do??? I can't get that blue line outta here!!

So anyway...oh, now the writing is blue too??...OK, so I was treated to a girls day out at the movies with Rebekkah on New Year's Day. Drew (I didn't do a thing to make it regular writing again). So, Drew gave me just a bit of a hard time when we left- just sayig he wanted to come and stuff like that, but Jim easily distracted him. Upon my return he told me to leave again. I'm glad to know he had so much fun with the boys. Jacob napped most of the time we were away, so unfortunately we can not blame the following on him one bit...
The huge floor ABC puzzle is all over the place, books are off of the shelf, not a single toy is in it's designated spot, the chair is even tipped over...ooohh are we in trouble deep! Alright, not really, and did he have a blast tearing the room apart! I'm wondering though, did Drew really manage to do this all by himself or did Jim and Doug secretly have fun helping him?