Nieces and Nephews: Miguel

The next young'un is 3-year-old Miguel. Over the past few months, he seems to have grown a lot, at least to me. He is now more talkative and is showing off his personality which can be goofy at times! He has a contagious smile and is very smart. I played Dominoes with him for the first time over Christmas (it might have been his first time playing the game too) and he did marvelously! We played the game using the colors of the dots instead of the number of dots on the tiles. He had no problem matching the colors. At some point during Christmas too, he rode on my shoulders around the house (I really forgot whose idea that was!), and he loved it! I had great fun too.

It's not easy to take pictures of him facing the camera, but whenever I catch him looking my way, I usually get pretty good pictures, like this one. :-)

He likes his puzzles.

Just finished a game of Dominoes with A and me.

I can't explain what was going on in this picture, but he was having fun with Uncle "Monkey" and Aunt J! (It was Hubby with his tea in the foreground.)

Nieces and Nephews: Miss E

In this blog, I have mentioned my nieces and nephews from time to time. Since we have a lot of pictures from Christmas, but more so because they are such darlings, I thought I would do a "mini blog series" to post more pictures about them. We have three nieces and three nephews, from 4 months to 9 years old. To kick it off, I am going to start with the littlest.

Miss E was born last summer. We got to meet her over Christmas for the first time since she lives far away. She is such a sweet and happy baby! She cried only once or twice, but that was only when it was her bed time at night and she did not want to be left alone. When she was awake, she was almost always smiling. And her big blue eyes are stunning!

I tried to take her as much as I could during Christmas. Various family members were generous enough to let me have her quite a bit, and I took A LOT OF pictures of her. The followings are only a small part of the collection. Enjoy!

All bundled up for the outing to the Zoo.

One of the MANY pictures I took of her.

She likes to put two figures in her mouth.

One of my favorite pictures with E!

Christmas 2009

Happy New Year! As we welcome the new year - and decade, I am recapping some fond - and fresh - Christmas memories. Enjoy!

This year, our home looked nothing like it was a year ago. There was no Christmas tree, no lights, no candles. I never got caught up on the Christmas preparations, since I barely got the Christmas cards and newsletters out in the mail, and Christmas shopping done before Christmas. I was still wrapping Christmas presents after the Christmas Eve Service. On top of this busyness (which seemed more than usual than years past), Hubby was sick.

But all was good. Hubby got better and off we went to my brother- and sister-in-law's for Christmas. We had a great time! It was a special year since my mother-in-law was back in the US  for a visit after almost 2 years of serving overseas, our new niece was born in the summer, and everyone from Hubby's side of family was there. We had a lot of family fun. We enjoyed a lot of food and laughter. Here are some highlights:

• Meeting our four-month-old niece. She is such a happy and quiet baby that she makes everything easy! I took so many pictures of her!
• Playing Dominoes with my 3-year-old nephew. He was really good at it.
• Seeing our 5-year-old niece in the outfits we got her; and putting a ribbon on her hair
• Watching our 5-year-old nephew build his Lego city.
• Staying in the cold (for a few minutes) with my oldest niece and nephews, one 9 years old and the other almost 9, as they tried to watch the moon and stars, and explore the universe with my nephew's telescope.
• Reading to my nieces and nephews.
• Listening to my oldest niece read the Cars story to me.
• Letting my 3-year-old nephew ride on my shoulders.
• Playing card games with the adults.
• Fourteen of us going to the zoo.
• All of us, plus our aunt who was off work that day, going to the best barbeque place for dinner right before we headed back.

It was another great Christmas with family.