Dear Santa

Preparing for Christmas this year has been quite the drawn-out process! Not only are we getting ready for Santa, but we're also getting ready for Baby Girl Cousin #2, who is set to arrive on December 16. With that, and Gavin's first birthday on December 20, we'll have quite the social calendar each year in December!

It took us three days to put ornaments on our trees. We let Miles go crazy on our "family" tree, so the lower third of the tree has about 5 ornaments on each branch. Here's Round One:



Luckily, Marshall hasn't quite figured out that the ornaments are there yet in all of his crawling adventures. He's pretty focused on cords right now, so maybe he'll be drawn to the tree once he tires of that.

We had an impromtu photo session to see what we could come up with for our Christmas cards, and we got quite a few keepers! I was planning on using the world's cutest school pictures, but the Christmas ones turned out so well that we abandoned that plan. I won't spoil the surprise, but here's one that we didn't use. I think Miles looks so old in this one - it hurts my heart!



Today we visited Santa at my work. Marshall was not his biggest fan:



Miles told Santa that he wanted the race track thing that goes on the wall. Shortly after Thanksving, I helped him write his letter to Santa. Here's the transcript. I think Santa will probably do a pretty good job getting most of the stuff on this list, so you might not want to buy him any of this stuff!

Dear Santa,
I would like more socks. Some of my socks are too small and too empty. I want a train (like a black train on a black track). That is what I saw on a kid newspaper. A black robot (editor's note: Miles has been referring to him recently as "a black guy"). He's that tall and says "MM. MM. MM." and he moves his feet like that. And he talks to other robots and says, "Hey, I'm a robot." He tackles him! Maybe a gumball machine that's like big and straight with colored gumballs inside...like a rainbow. On my next one, I want another robot that punches Transformer bad guys. A star machine with lots of twinkly stars. A grabber thingy that can grab my boots and throw it in my room and let go and pops in my room. I want some new boots. Some more crayons too. A Mr. Potato Head that goes on his head. I want maybe a boat just like on the Curious George movie and it goes, "Moooooot!" (like loud). Two rocket ship crayons.

I like you Santa.

Love,
Miles

Turkey Flu

So, you might remember a while back when Miles had the swine flu. It's not quite Bird Flu, but I like to call this year's round the Turkey Flu. Miles brought home the foul little fowl the night before Thanksgiving. He was up all night puking but was in surprisingly good spirits the next day. I was hoping he just had a minor bug, and that would be the end of it. This is where the wah-wah sound effect would come in if this were a TV show. We enjoyed a relaxed morning with Uncle David, Aunt Hilary, and Gavin. The best part of it all - Marshall decided to start crawling!!

And, yes, that is a dog chewie. Notice the 273 different toys strewn around and how that boy was only interested in the nasty chewed-up raw hide that he couldn't have. Whatever motivates him! Miles got better throughout the day, and, despite my feeling like dung, we all seemed to have a nice family Thanksgiving dinner. Marshall even got to eat Turkey with Sweet Potatoes baby food!

It wasn't quite Miles' favorite food...if he had he wish, he would have had Taco Bell. (The Sunday before, he told the entire congregration during the Children's Sermon that Taco Bell was the place he was most thankful for.)

I started to feel better the next day, so I hoped the whole illness thing was a fluke. (WAH, WAH) We decided to go downtown to see the Circle of Lights illuminated. Here's a pic before the lights came on.

Unfortunately, Uncle David, Aunt Hilary, and Gavin didn't make it to the countdown, thanks to the Turkey Flu's decision to take vengeance on Uncle David. I was the next victim later that evening. Oh, the Humanity!!!

Just as I was beginning to make a recovery, we noticed that Marshall had a fever. Shortly afterward, Jason was laid out from the Turkey's treachery. We heard that Aunt Hilary and Gavin made it home in time for them to be struck down by the Turkey's fury as well.

After three days of fevers, we took Marshall in to the doc. He confirmed that it was indeed Influenza A. He said that we were his first official case of the year. I told him we were honored. All of this, and our entire family had flu shots! I lamented to the doc about the point of it all, and he reminded me that things could have been a lot worse if we hadn't gotten the shots.

So, lesson for the day. Get your flu shots...or the Turkey Man may come to get you too!