Mark & Mandy

We took a walk yesterday and stopped to let Elsie have some snow time in her Pink Patagonia snow suit …

Here are some shots of elsie enjoying her christmas loot …

Chewing (favored activity) on her christmas bear from the Jost’s

Playing with her Elmo Table from Riley, Heather, Finley and Robb!

New duds from Grammie

Elsie wondering why Cricket has taken over her chair …

Her new green juicy suit from Auntie Sandy and Uncle Rod!

Elsie’s first Christmas was a blast – we were lucky enough to have both families here to celebrate. Michael and Alison in from England, Chloe in from San Fran, and my parents down from Montana. On Christmas morning we were greeted by a dusting of snow – which continued throughout the day – perfect white Christmas. The Sladden’s are notoriously late so Elsie and I headed down to Josh and Amy’s ahead of the crew leaving mark behind to lightly push them out the door (they arrive only 35 minutes late – not bad for a sladden arrival!).

Josh and Amy cooked up a yummy brunch of crepes, frittata  and lots of breakfast meat – YUM! They had set a beautiful table and even made a space for the bean to have her own christmas brunch – puffed wagon wheels!

Saffie greeted us in her Baby’s first Christmas Bib:

After a yummy brunch we moved to the presents. We tried to scale back this year – pleading with my parents (who didn’t listen) … but still we ended up with piles of gifts

Mostly for the new babies…

Underneath these piles were two adorable chair for the girls … elsie started her warm up exercises to get ready to open the gifts.

It was very hard, but rewarding work – although chewing and ripping paper was the most fun.

Elsie was pooped and borrowed saffie’s swing for a nap!

Eventually we finished the marathon opening and headed back home to eat some more. Chloe and Mark cooked up some Braised short ribs (from our local cow we purchased) on a bed of polenta with cranberry sauce. It was great to have the two sladden’s manning the kitchen and serving up a delicious dinner.

Success I say!

too cute : http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1841218603

Christmas always brings tamales to thunder lake circle as the Baros hold their annual party. This year, they took things up a notch by inviting Santa to the party.

Santa had a list of all the neighborhood children (most of whom had been nice) and after he led a sing-along with all the kids at his feet, he entertained requests from each one.

Here’s Jenna Baro telling Santa what she wants:

and Elsie was much more tolerant of Santa this time around (see an earlier post for her first encounter with the man in Red)!

Of course all the parents couldn’t get enough of the kids and Santa – it seems these days the paparazzi is a staple of any young kid’s life.

Elsie enjoyed hanging out with dad and showing off her pink ribbon: spoons are fun!

Who can resist her chuckles!

Calling all models! We took a few shots of Elsie for our New Year’s cards (to be sent out shortly) and had her try on her new Uggs (thanks Niko).

She is even grown up enough to wear a ribbon in her hair (okay, so we had to stick it on with Caro Syrup!)

We tried out the ducky bath this weekend – it was a hit!

We were up in Montana with my folks this weekend and attended the annual Santa brunch at the Yellowstone Country Club. Elsie was all dressed up ready for her big meeting with Ho Ho! (Finley showed us how to put cute little bows in our hair)

We wanted Finley and Elsie to have their photo’s together so we placed a sleeping finley on santa’s lap and then it was on to elsie… here is a cute progression of how the meeting went:

Santa is a bit scary to a little bean!  Elsie was still a little traumatized even in mom and dad’s arms.

We had quite a thanksgiving this year in Colorado – we were lucky to have my aunt sandy, uncle rod, grandma ruby, Kev, tyler, dylan, lauren and of course my parents. We had a wonderful dinner! We usually spend turkey weekend in Seattle with the crew and then we often brave black friday in downtown to watch the lighting of the christmas tree – this black friday we decided to do things a little differently. We had a star wars themed birthday celebration for Dylan and Lauren.

We decided it might be fun to make each person attending the party a star wars character – so we tapped into our star wars mind trust (Amy and Josh, but mostly Amy!) to come up with a list of character and a tag line for each person. Everyone got a shirt to wear for the day of activities … bowling, dinner at bennihana and then off to Josh and Amy’s for game night!

here are some shots of the crew:

Dylan said it was the best birthday ever! Thanks mom for staying up late to iron shirts even in our turkey coma!