Josie is here!

We are overjoyed to welcome Josie.

 Never has a baby been so blessed as to have two moms like Lisa and Betty.

Lisa had a long labor- here are a couple of photos from the beginning when they didn't know it would take another 40 some hours.  Lisa did amazing in labor, from Thursday afternoon until Josie was born on Saturday afternoon.

We all relished our opportunities to hold baby Josie.  She is such an angel.

(I am pretty happy to be Aunt Amy)

Lilly is waving Hi to Josie.  We are trying to teach her not to touch babies, except for on the toes.  So far she is doing OK.

Uncle Tim

Grandma

Grandpa

I don't think there could be a better Christmas present than a new baby in the family :)

Our hike

So it isn't every Christmas Eve in Denver that you can take a long hike in a valley because the weather is in the 50s.  It was perfect :)  I know that someday there will be snow- and I can wait.


It was cold enough to need hats- here is Lilly, being the cute little girl she is.  She slept on my back whole hike so the only photo I have of her is before when we were eating lunch.

 Mark did hike the whole 2 miles- without any whining!  But he did find a lot of things to do along the trail that were not so fast.  For instance he wanted to hide under all the big boulder and in all the hiddy holes, he wanted to draw in the sand, he wanted to touch that water (it was cold), and he wanted to pick up rocks for dinosaur food.  My coat pocket is full of rocks and sand now.

 We had to cross the creek here- there was no bridge and the final hop was kinda far - especially for getting Mark, the stroller, and me with Lilly in the pack across

Speaking of the stroller, the BOB stroller we have will go over a lot of terrain, but not this.  The trail looked flat when we started, but then 90% of it was not flat enough for a kid in the stroller and a few parts of it were so steep/rocky that it had to be carried.  I only have photos of Tim hauling it, but Grandpa did quite a bit of it too.

S

Christmas

This is how big they were last year

 Here is everyone first thing in the morning.

 Lilly with her Christmas Minnie.

 Mark was SO ready to open presents

 Life doesn't get much better than opening stockings with Grandma and Grandpa and getting to eat chocolate first thing in the morning.

 My attempt at getting a posed photo from them.  Only one ever looks up at the same time.

 Lilly's favorite present was my pearl (thank you Tim :) ).  She took them out of the box before I even had it all the way open and put them right on.

 Isn't this the reaction you always want from your kids?  Mark was SO excited to get a large Mac Truck.

 He also got a collection of other cars from the Cars movie- he has been playing 'pit crew' all day.