December Pics

Well I found some pictures from December that I didn't post yet, so above is a pillow I made for Claire for Christmas. We had a really lovely Christmas together with family.

We've been seeing lots of Pine Martins around our house. They're hard to get pictures of, but Nate got this one not long ago. They're so graceful and beautiful. I'll miss seeing them around when we leave this place. I've heard they're also one of the monkey's only predators here. I like them! :)

Family meals around our table.

Annie and "baby Claire"
Annie really loves babies. She always called Claire "baby Claire" and usually she wanted to hold her on her lap. However, Claire, while almost a year younger than Annie, weighs more than her and is almost as tall, so sitting on Annie's lap was NOT Claire's idea of a good time. It sure was cute, though, to see them together. "sit my yap, baby Claire"

Bedtime

When it's bedtime, Will would rather read or play with all the toys he neglected all day long. Usually he just gets to go to bed, but last night he got to read for a few minutes. Our high-maintenance Annie needs even more care at bedtime. She has a lot of sores that won't heal because she keeps picking them at night so those need bandaids. She also picks sores on her head, so we convinced her that wearing a hat to bed would be really cool. However, if she's wearing her hat, she wants her "baby Dechen" (which is named after our friends' baby) to be laying beside her, also wearing a hat. And we can't forget to cover her doll with a nice, warm blanket. But aren't they cute when it's all over with?

About time!

It's about time I got blogging again, I suppose. Now I'm way behind, and we took too many pictures for me to try to sort though, but I'll put a few on here that I like from our past month or so. We had a great time with family visiting us and we enjoyed resting at home and sight-seeing with them- it has been a really nice vacation for our family. We wandered around our town quite a bit and enjoyed the beautiful weather.
I like this picture of my sister and my kids. She's such a fun Aunt! Thanks for visiting- we miss you!
And here's a picture of me and the kids at the Taj Mahal. Too bad most of the pictures I took there have a crooked Taj Mahal in the background... sad!

We got to see some really neat forts and other buildings. Above, the kids are looking out a little window in the ladies' quarters in the Agra Fort.

Such amazing architecture. Nate got a lot of neat pictures of the geometric carvings and in-laid stone designs that we saw.

I like this picture of my wonderful husband and our little boy.

OH, MY CUTE LITTLE NIECE! She was SO busy and smiled so much. Something I think about often is how much I'd like our families to know and enjoy our kids. It was special to have this time with family and get to know our niece too.

There's our tourist group. :)

I think camels are neat...

... and funny-looking!

Let's just say that the camel ride was a lot more rickety than the elephant ride.

And then there were the train rides. Our kids occupied themselves pretty well during all those hours.

My sister's visit

My sister came to visit us!!! Above is a picture of us at the Taj Mahal a couple of weeks ago. We were tourists for a week while Nate's sister and family were here, so we have lots of pictures (like over 1000) from our week of traveling around seeing sights together and it was really fun.

One thing that my brother-in-law wanted to do in India was ride an elephant. Since none of us had ridden an elephant before, we thought it was a great idea to hunt down a ride. Elephants are much taller than camels, which we also rode - I didn't realize they were that much bigger.

My sister's favorite animal is the elephant.

Back at Redwood Cottage, we've been being lazy each day - sleeping in, watching movies, playing games, talking, eating, going for walks sometimes. It's nice to just hang out. My sister and I made Fiskebak's bread (honokaka), which we subsequently devoured as you can see in the picture above.

My mom sent some bubble bath for the kids. Will thought it was great! Annie didn't like it one bit until we found a toy for her to scoop it up with. Thanks for all the treats, mamma!

Aunt Yad has been humoring the kids in every way - even crawling into the school bus with them so Will can drive her to the train station. :)

And my sister gave me an early birthday present - she cross-stitched the little table cloth above for me. Isn't it beautiful?!

That's all for now. I'll post some earlier pictures of our time with Nate's sister and family sometime too- just wanted to share a glimpse of life here right now. And today we woke up to snow!! I love the snow! We've had excellent weather- so nice and warm, and then today it's snowing. SO NICE.

too much to write about

Before an entire month passes in between posts, I thought I'd just drop a note to say hi to anyone who has been thoroughly un-impressed with my blog lately. We have been keeping very busy, enjoying special visits from far-away family members, celebrating Christmas together, being tourists together and now being at our home together. It's very wonderful to have family come and visit us and see us in our home here. We got to visit the Taj Mahal and ride an elephant and camel and see the Amber Fort and an old abandoned city palace outside Agra, which were some things I have been wanting to see and do for a few years now. It was really great to do it with my sister and sister-in-law and her family.

So I have too much much to write about and will just stop for now since Nate has fixed us another mug of chai which I'd better go sit and enjoy. My sister is here for another couple of weeks and after that I might manage to post a bit more regularly again.
So long for now! :)