2 Months!

Griffin - you are now 2 months old! How the time is flying...
Mommy and Daddy love you so much and are enjoying every minute of you (even in the middle of the night during endless wakeups). You are now just over 11lbs, and are working on a third and fourth chin. You are giving us the biggest smiles, and not just when you poop, and making little cooing noises. You love to watch your brother play and are still the biggest cuddlebug in town. You head and neck are getting stonger every day and you can hold yourself up on your wee legs for a few seconds at a time, and like Princess Savage, you are growing the sweetest little friar tuck haircut as the bald patch on the back of your head grows by the day!

To the tune of "The 12 Days of Christmas"

On the first day of Christmas, Santa gave to me.....
2 plus feet of snow, 4 stranded relatives, 1 power outage and an 18 pound turkey!!

Seriously though, Christmas 2008 will go down in history as definately the most memorable of my entire life thus far. Not only were we socked in with over 2 feet of snow, we then unexpectedly welcomed the entire Miller clan for Christmas when they got stranded in Seattle after the airport shut down, plus we endured a 12 hour power outage from Christmas Eve to Christmas Morning. But despite all the calamities, it was chaotic and exciting and wonderful to have such a large crew at Chez Nielsen for Christmas. Jasper loved spending lots of fun time with his cousins, and I loved having lots of extra hands to help with the Christmas festivities and with wee Griffin. On Christmas Day we also welcomed Greg/Al and the girls, plus Mum and Dad, plus cousin James and family, plus Auntie Sue and cousin Kylie - for a grand total of 15 adults and 7 kids for dinner! Times like these really make you realize what is important not only at this time of the year, but in life in general...and that is family and friends - and with both we are sooooooo blessed.

Using Santa

I think by next year we will be able to use Santa to our full advantage - that is, getting Jasper to be a good boy (in Dec at least) since Santa only brings prezzies to good little girls and boys. However, this year Santa was still met with some skepticism and a little fear, but Jasper warmed up to him once the chocolate was handed out....

Jasper denying Santa the Hi-Five

Santa and wee Griffin

The Boys

Its Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We had our first dump of snow the other day much to Jasper's delight and Aaron's dismay as he was "forced" to pull Jasper up and down the hill about 100 times on the tobaggan! Griffin isn't too fond of the snow either being that he is still bald and all (poor little cold head!), but he continues to work hard at packing on pounds (and chins!) to keep the cold at bay - like his brother, he loves his snilky (milk).

More pics

A few more shots from the photo shoot - compliments of Sacha Mulen Photography...
These were taken 3 weeks ago and already Griffin has filled out all of the loose skin you can see in the pics and is well on his way to growing a 3rd and 4th chin!

Sha Sha and Griffie

These are for auntie Shark - pleae forgive me for forgetting about them, they got buried in the stack of photos I had not sorted since before we lost internet...
Big kisses!

Disconnected

Recently we went without internet access for 8 days...it sure made me realize how dependant I am on technology for even the simplest of things these days. It also forced me to use the telephone to communicate with the outside orld, a good thing indeed in these impersonal times, and I think a resolution for me to carry into the New Year.

I have also realized that my poor wee Griffin is already falling victim to "second child-itis" in that I have not taken many pics of him and he is almost 6 weeks old already! So, am posting a few from last week to make up for it and will also try to make it a resolution to capture Griff's progress through infanthood more that once per month : )

We had our 2nd annual cookie party yesterday Chez Nielsen and it was a success on many levels...no kids threw up (including Jasper!), we did not find icing in every crack and crevass post-party, and lots of friends got to finally meet baby Griffin.