Santa Claus and a birthday boy

The past week has been a busy one with Christmas and Nathan's birthday. We had a really good time celebrating both occasions!

The holiday season started with a huge snowstorm. Justin couldn't get into work for two days (fun for us!) and my family wasn't sure they were going to be able to make it in from Boise and Portland for Christmas. Thankfully my parents made it safely on Monday and Jen, Chris and the girls hopped in the car spur of the moment on Tuesday and made it here too. This was the state of our deck on Sunday morning:

Despite the weather Santa made it to a local community center to see Jill and meet Nate. Jillian wasn't at all scared of him. She got right up on his lap and posed for several pics. Nathan wasn't so sure, but kept a brave face on the entire time. In the car on the way home Jill exclaimed "I forgot to tell Santa what I wanted for Christmas!" Justin reassured her, telling her that he had whispered her wish for a princess bike in Santa's ear when she wasn't looking. :)

Cousins. Lots of crazy playing and running around. The girls had fun playing dress up, watching Wall-E and dolling themselves up with Emma's make up kit.

The girls got to open one gift on Christmas eve - jammies! High School Musical for Julia and Emma, pink and purple stripes for Jill.

A delicious, relaxing crab dinner for the adults after all of the little ones were tucked in to bed (with the exception of Emma who was so excited she couldn't sleep!).

The tree surrounded by presents! Christmas morning was crazy. The girls could hardly wait to come upstairs and when they did, they were SO excited. My mom had made photo tags for the presents so Jill and Emma could help play "Santa." I think they used a two for me, one for you distribution method. :)

I originally thought we would just lay low on Nathan's birthday, but so many friends asked what we were doing to celebrate, we decided to have a casual open-house style gathering so people could come whenever it was convenient for them. Many of our friends were in town for the holidays so we ended up with a packed house! It was so much fun. Nathan's "cake" was chocolate cupcakes with gray frosting and robot faces.

Nathan wasn't too sure about the cake...

In the end he didn't eat any of it, but had fun playing with the frosting!

Nathan had a lot of help opening presents from friends and siblings who were having withdrawls from Christmas morn!

It's hard to believe that Nathan is one already. He can:

• WALK!
• clap
• give high fives
• smile
• understand "no" (although he often pretends he doesn't understand!)
• put everything in his mouth
• eat big boy food - his favorites are broccoli, peas, corn, kiwi, banana, toast with butter, fake chicken nuggets, etc, etc
• tell mommy and daddy when he's "all done"
• find the toilet, put the lid up and stick his hand in!
• climb into the open dishwasher
• climb stairs

Happy Birthday Nathan Reed! Now on to 2009!