I bought gifts for Aidan to take in to his classmates for Chinese New Year.  The kit came with 12 hare coloring cards, 12 paper lanterns in different colors, 12 red envelopes, and 12 gold wrapped chocolate coins.  To say that he was thrilled would be an enormous understatement!  It is obvious that he remembers celebrations in China even if he doesn't remember the exact nature of them.
 
So we're all done now-all four trees.  It was so great to see Aidan this year, excited and knowing what was coming.  He was singing carols, pestering me about "how long before..." whatever the next time marker was, and generally loving the season.
Picture
Picture
 
So here is how our Christmas goes.  Christmas Eve-candlelight service followed by food and a tree with our big kids and their kids.  Christmas morning-home with our younger kids.  Christmas afternoon-joining my enormous family.  Day after Christmas-food and a tree with G's family.  Here are some pictures of our preparations and celebrations (the first half):
Picture
Aidan, above, standing on a chair to reach the top.  Eventually he will be tall enough not to need the chair, whereas I will just get shorter and never reach the top!  Below is the tree, ready for the grandchildren to come.
Picture
The "big" gifts for the three grandsons were a "whirly wheel" at left for RB; a John Deere wheelbarrow for his brother MB, and a Melissa and Doug folding barn for BB.  All four grandchildren got a "Going to Grandma's House" bag with books, pjs, toys (diapers for CB).  Below, I managed to capture them all in just two shots.
Picture
There is always that one gift, right?  Well, this is it for me this year.  This is the gift that I will tell my kids and grandkids about because not only am I thrilled to finally have a cutting board, but also, I'm thrilled because my son in-law cut down a tree and then used his chainsaw to create this for me!  He is so special to us.  He spent weeks helping my husband go through all of the insides of Aidan's big gift, bought from a market in Texas that specializes in outdoor riding gear, both new and used.  A special guy and a special gift.

Picture
 
We sent our I-800A application in on November 2 and got the receipt about 10 days later, even with Veteran's Day in between.  So now we wait for a fingerprint appointment.

Halloween was a good time, but I gave my camera to Pretty Baby to take pictures of all three boys, since Brody was not coming to town and both she and Golden Baby were taking their boys to see G's parents at the same time.  So by the time I got the camera back, Aidan had had enough of his Ninja costume (he looked great!) and I only got shots of him eating candy.
Picture
The little ones were adorable.  Ricky was a skeleton-he wanted to be a ghost but no ghost costumes were available in his size so a skeleton was his second choice.  Brody was a cowboy, and what a little swashbuckler he was!  And Matthew was a fisherman; this is the costume that Ricky wore in 2008 but because of our delay in Beijing (paperwork issue) I missed both seeing him that year and seeing Matthew born.  This makes up for it!
Picture
Picture
Picture
And now we have a new arrival!  Our first granddaughter was born this week.  At first they thought she was 17-1/2" long (short) but on second measure, stretching her out, she was found to be 19-1/2" long.  Brody was pretty scared of her at first but he is already catching on to the big brother thing.
Picture
Our daughter in-law with the baby earlier today

Picture
Golden Baby and Brody with the baby on the night she was born

Picture
Pretty Baby with her niece on the night she was born.  The baby has Pretty Baby's middle name and Matthew has her uncle's name as his middle name, so the "mutual admiration society", as I call the relationship between our first two kids, continues.

Excited little cousin-he's not the baby of the family any more.  In fact, he just turned two last month and he's potty trained.  Takes after his mother that way!
Picture
 
Little Baby moved to college this week.  This is the view from her dorm:
Picture
This is the view of her dorm:
Picture
This is the most important room in any college-the library-and Little Baby is a library dweller, so she feels that way too!  She is an English major who hopes to be an editor, preferably of videogames, but an editor for sure.
Picture
Brody turned two this week but had his birthday last weekend; Ricky turned four this week and had his birthday this weekend.  Here are all four boys playing on the trampoline before the party began:
After the party I took Brody and Aidan to a farm days celebration since Brody loves animals, but it was mostly tractors and tools and demonstrations about old-time methods and crafts.  So we stopped on the way back at a farm in town where he saw a rabbit and chickens, then stopped at my mother's field to see her cows.  And the best part?  Before we left, he and Aidan got to drive the tractor with my fifth brother, who was haying in the meadow.  Sometimes you just don't have to leave town to have a good time.

Waiting for the Tractor; Are You Sure There's a Tractor out There?  Trust Me, There's a Tractor

Picture
Picture
Picture

Two Year Old and Six Year Old Drivers

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
 
Here in central NH we pack as much living as we can into the time we have to call summer, since it's such a short season.  Sometimes it doesn't really get started, weather-wise, until after the 4th of July; other years, like this, it starts earlier.  Here are the boys enjoying summer.
Picture
Brody, at 22 months, working very hard to read.  Below, Aidan is ready to go see Avatar with Pretty Baby.  The two of them have been watching the cartoon for a long time-remember that Aidan was Aang for Halloween?-many things were different in the movie from the show.  But a promise is a promise-he loved the movie!

Picture
Picture
Matthew pumping iron (wood) at the 4th of July parade.

Picture
Aidan and a buddy checking out party favors at his grandparents' cook-out.

Picture
Picture
Had to have the silly bandz (don't know if I spelled it right)-notice the smaller ones are on his fingers.

Picture
All three grandsons at the pool.

Picture
Picture
This one does not love swimming, especially if the water is deep or if people are splashing.

Picture
Picture
 
My niece finished her master's degree today in education-mental health counseling.  She already has the job she wants, but now she has the degree to go with it.  She has spent years working with adolescents in outdoor adventure and outdoor counseling type of situations-in Denali, Olympia, the White Mountains, the Rockies, even the flatter lands of New Jersey.  But today she graduated so we celebrated.

This is the niece who looks strikingly like I did when I was young, so here are some current and old pictures of us.
Picture
My niece today at 28 years old

Picture
My niece sharing the stoop with a cousin

Here I am a couple of years younger than my niece-celebrating my 25th birthday, then pregnant and with my third child.  As soon as I figure out how to rotate the scanned images, I'll do it.
Picture
And some additional pictures of party goers
 
Picture
Little Baby turned nineteen early this week and Aidan turned six.  On Saturday we had his party with puppy dog decorations and toys, including pin the pawprint on the dog.  Then in the evening we went out to eat with the two youngest kids, Golden Baby and his son.  Pretty Baby's boys were wiped out from the birthday party, so they stayed home.  Today G and I went with Aidan to Mom's sandpit and filled buckets of sand so that he could fill his "big" gift-the covered turtle sandbox.  Our oldest dog will go to the bathroom wherever it is most comfortable for her-soft sand, freshly tilled garden, shoveled walkways, etc.  So a cover is a must at our house.

Mom had a rough afternoon and evening yesterday, was not able to go to church today, but recovered somewhat as the day went on.  She hadn't eaten anything but a piece of toast by lunch, so I made some corn chowder for her, put the leftovers in the fridge, Little Baby made cookies, we went to the store for some of her favorite foods, and Pretty Baby is going to make baked beans tomorrow night for her.  Mom has been craving her mother's baked beans.  My grandmother died before I was born, so Mom hasn't had them in more than 45 years.  She says she follows her mother's directions, but her own are never as good, and thinks it's because my grandmother's beans were made on the woodstove.  But we'll see how she likes Pretty Baby's beans-my daughters can really cook!  Pretty Baby excels at baked beans, corn chowder, meatloaf, and pies.  Little Baby makes the greatest banana bread-she's going to make some for her grandmother tomorrow.  So hopefully we can keep her eating and she can keep the food down.  Wednesday is her biopsy.  She did say that one kidney had spots and there is, of course, the liver tumor.  A lot will depend on what else they find.  They think the cancer has spread from somewhere else-the question will be, from where?  When that is answered, Mom will know what comes next.  She's okay with living without part of her liver and without a kidney.  So we'll have to wait and see what this week brings.
 
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
Picture
Today, I got to stand up, raise my right hand, and take the oath of allegiance on Aidan's behalf.  We got his gold sealed certificate of citizenship.  He wanted to know why there was an eagle on everything and what that meant.  He got a little flag, which he loves.  The lady stamped her name on his hand, which he also loves.  We then went to social security and he got the other hand stamped with their stamp.  And on the way home I cried.  Not a lot, but when it hit me, it really hit me hard.  I wish my father were alive (1923-1993).  He used to lecture us on the value of citizenship, about how if you didn't use your vote you'd lost your vote, about how lucky we were to have the rights we do in this country.  The amazing thing is, Dad's family came here in 1630, so it's not like he was a first generation American, but he never forgot the value of citizenship.  And today I was, literally, flooded with the meaning of it.  Aidan--not so much so.  He fell asleep on the way home.
 
My sister organized a housewarming party for two women in our family who are not yet in their homes, but close.  The first was for her daughter in-law, who got not only a surprise batch of gifts (she thought we were meeting at Mom's house to get ready for the other party) but also a job!  She and my nephew are buying a house from my brother, who bought a house to restore and resell.  It is up the road from us about 1/2 mile.  My nephew's wife is from France  and just got a job teaching French at a local prep school, beginning in January.  Here she is receiving her gifts while my brother in-law and niece look on (my nephew is actually in France so he wasn't here for the party):
Picture
The second surprise was for my brother's girlfriend.  This is our second brother, and after all the decades of living that he has done (ha-ha), he has probably at last found what we always wanted for him-a practical woman.  They bought a house that was once the Settlement House, then became my great uncle's house, and had been through all types of changes-a fire, a renovation, additions galore.  Anyway, they pretty much gutted it and started over.  It sits on the hill above my mother's house and looks out over the pond.  Here she is getting her gifts:
Picture
Here is  Aidan, first at the party and then playing outside with his Craftsman tools.
Picture
Picture
And we got in a lot of playtime this week.  Wednesday was a snow day.  RB came over for the day but when Pretty Baby came to get him, her driveway wasn't plowed, so both he and MB came back to play some more.  Then last night she had her Christmas party at work so they came back again.