Holiday Greetings

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. Best wishes for the coming New Year. A few photos from Christmas Day at home:

Ho ho ho (pimp!)

Baxter says thanks for my new toys:

Christmas breakfast:

Cronin Christmas

Thanks for hosting us again, Jim and Terry. And yay, Jessie made it home! Photos fom the Cronin Family Christmas

The grands (Courtney, Cameron, Jessie, Delaney, Joe)with Grampy and Grandma Eleanor:

Mike and Courtney:

Eleanor, Jim, Dad:

Darlene and Mike, the newlyweds:

Grampa Jim and Chris:

Cam and Nana:

The Truth:

Terry and Fungo:

Tom, Laurie, Eleanor, Dad:

Kingfield Christmas

From the Woodford family Christmas on Saturday

Michelle, Adam, Hannah, Shylah, and Molly (10 days old):

Shylah playing Ring Around the Rosy:

Declan:

Chris with Molly (niece/nephew #12 for us):

Grammie always buys a new game. This year it was Deal or No Deal. Hannah was often very adamant that it was "No deal!":

Christmas chaos:

Grammie and Grampa with Molly:

Merry Christmas

Tomorrow we begin our three days of Christmas. We start in Kingfield tomorrow for our Woodford Christmas, Sunday we go to Scarborough for our Cronin Christmas, and Monday we'll stay home and enjoy our presents from Santa. We've got our fingers crossed that my niece Jessie will make it home in time. (She's stuck in Colorado because of the blizzard. We just saw the airport on the news--it's the Nightmare Before Christmas!)We're looking forward to seeing both families, including the newest Woodford, Molly Bea, born on Dec 13.

Check out this link on Youtube of a house here in Auburn with a Christmas light show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQuJJAf0-eY&mode=related&search=

And here's one of my rather pathetic "moving light" photos from when we went by the house last weekend:


And some more pictures:

My elves:

Cuteness:

Cam finds the paparazzi so annoying:

A couple of b-ball shots:


and a shot of him dressed up for his semi-formal dance recently:

First snow day

No school today. We got about this much:

"I can't believe you made me shovel the driveway.":

Backward sledding is even more fun than frontward:

Baxter helpfully tries to eat Delaney's friend Jessie after a wipeout:

Striking a pose:

Trim up the tree

It's not all hot cocoa and Christmas carols. Every year there's Mom yelling, too. This year it was, "I SAID put your heads together and smile! I want a nice picture of you two by the tree!! Just forget it! Good enough. Happy?"

My new favorite website

I've been keeping this one open on the computer all day:
Sorry I can't get a clickable link to post; you'll have to cut and paste. Africam:

http://www.wavelit.com/popup/playerAfricam.asp#


I saw elephants today! (about 11 a.m. our time, 6 p.m. Africa time)

Catch-up time

Happy Holiday season to everyone. There's been a lot going on around here, but nothing too photographable. First, I want to wish a very Happy Birthday to my wonderful dad, who turned 70 yesterday.

Chris started a new job with Celgene this week. What agony it was for him deciding whether to leave Pfizer after so many years. Ironically, two days after his resignation was official, Pfizer announced a 20% cut in their sales force. The employees have been told to stay home on Decemberber 18 and wait for a phone call telling them if they have a job or not. Cold! So glad we don't have to deal with that stress, and we hope his colleagues and friends will remain employed or find even better opportunities.

I have been taking a lot of pictures with my new camera, which I love! My goal is to learn to use the camera in manual mode rather than automatic and to take better pictures. Here are some pictures from the last few weeks:

Happy Thanksgiving

I didn't get too many pictures of our Thanksgiving day at the Woodfords in Kingfield, but I just had to post this picture of my niece Sarah. I wonder if she knows who Elton John is.

Godspell

Delaney was in the play Godspell this weekend over at the high school. They did four performances. She managed to get center stage next to Jesus during the finale one night.

Doo, doo, doo, lookin' out my back door

People talk about how moms can read their baby's cries--hungry, tired, etc. I realized Baxter has a "Hey! There's a deer in the backyard!" bark. It's been getting a workout this week. These does must know it's safe in our yard.

Halloween report

Delaney wanted to be a sumo wrestler this year, with one of those blow-up suits. Nothing in Lewiston-Auburn. So we took a trip to a big Halloween store in Portland, where I found a child-sized sumo costume. Score! Nope, she changed her mind. She wandered all over that big store, saying, "There's nothing good here." Sigh. One more trip around the store, and she ended up being.......a witch. But isn't she the cutest witch you ever saw?

Happy Halloween

BOO!

Pumpking carving day

I've been trying to post these photos for a week, but Blogger has been "a butt" as Delaney would say. From the annual Woodford pumpkin-carving day last weekend:
Cam, Delaney, Chris, Marissa

Declan

Delaney

Sarah

Shylah

The Woodford grandkids minus Hannah and Kasper plus Marissa

Adam