elephant towel

Hey everyone, we're back from our Christmas vacation to the Lodge. It was a great trip and a wonderful Christmas but we're glad to be home. Lots of pictures and stories to come, but I also have a lot of work-related catching up to do since we were "off the grid" for a week, so here's a short quick post to get back in the swing.

Will got a couple of new towels as presents for Christmas and they're great. Here he's stylin' his elephant one. Fun stuff.

Check out these elephant teeth!

missing Uncle Adam and Aunt Chandi

We're really looking forward to seeing all of our family for the holidays...except, sadly, Uncle Adam and Aunt Chandi, who can't make the international trip to the Lodge this year. We'll miss you guys. So you won't feel so left out when we post all the pictures of Will with AJ and the weinerboy we'll feature you two here as the top post for a week. Maybe Adam can photoshop some Santa hats or something on themselves in these pictures.

Don't worry, Will will be giving you several calls with Christmas greetings over the next few days...

Christmas '07...part 1

Hello everyone. This blog post comes from Indian River, MI, where we're staying the night at a lovely Holiday Inn Express (they just better have nanas at the continental breakfast tomorrow). We're on our way to the Lincoln Lodge for the Ferris family Christmas, via the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We're looking forward to going over the Mackinac Bridge tomorrow morning on the way.

By the way, Will's asleep right now - in order for Erin and I to avoid having to basically go to bed at 8:00 with him, we put his crib in the bathroom so he can't see/hear us. It's fun to reminisce about the last time we stayed in a hotel and used this technique.

Since we'll be pretty much in the middle of the forest for the better part of a week, this will be the last blog post until after Christmas. By then we should have tons of pictures and stories to report, which we will obviously do via Will's page.

To tide you over until then, here are some pictures from the Mueller/Ekena/Ferris Christmas we celebrated last weekend at our house. Merry Christmas and Love to everyone.

In the spirit of Christmas, Duke decided to be friendly with Will, and Will shared his presents with Duke in return.

Grandpa got me my first soccer ball!



Santa gave mom these sunglasses and Will made sure to try them out for her first.

Will's just discovered the joys of coloring, although he is terrible at staying in the lines.

Aunt Sara and Uncle Jeff got Will not one, but TWO singing fridge magnet things which were very well received. They both have lots of songs that can be played at the push of a button, to Will's delight.

Will wears holiday accessories

Unlike our cats, Will is pretty cheerful about wearing Christmas-themed accessories. Here he is wearing a Christmas cape (mom's apron).




Here, a nice festive Christmas scarf.




And here he is putting on the matching hat, or at least trying to.

the sleepiest boy in the world

It's not too uncommon for Will to fall asleep in the car, especially if we're heading home from somewhere around his nap times (about 10 AM/1:30 PM). Usually if I have him when this happens I let him sleep for a few minutes in his seat when we get home, put away his stroller/bags/whatever, and then have to wake him up to bring him in. He almost always wakes up when I'm unbuckling his carseat. Last week we went to the doctor, which can be very draining, so when he fell asleep on the way home he was REALLY out. He didn't wake up at all when I pulled him out of his carseat, and laid on me like a sack of beans as I carried him inside and sat him on the couch. He looked too sweet so I didn't try too hard wake him up. Then I got busted when Erin got home a few minutes later because by letting him stay asleep at that time (it was around 12:00), it was going to mess up his afternoon nap, which it did.

Will gets in the holiday spirit

Will helped us set up our Christmas decorations. It was very fun for him - lots of colorful, shiny, fragile things. Fortunately nothing has been broken...yet.



Here he's admiring our fake tree and helping to decorate it. He got himself all tangled up in the lights, it was pretty funny.



This is a tree ornament that Erin and Will made for me last year when he was a really little guy. It's an imprint of his hand. Here he's testing to see how much bigger his hand is now.

Grandma and Grandpa Mueller and Aunt Sara and Uncle Jeff are coming tonight to celebrate Christmas with us this weekend, then next week we're going to the Lincoln Lodge for another Christmas celebration. We talked to Santa and he agreed to bring Will presents twice, as long as there are extra cookies involved. We'll take lots of pictures and post 'em.

Funny lip noises

Will gives kisses now and I was trying to get one here, with Erin ready to capture it on camera. Instead Will thought it would be a good time to make some funny lip noises (you know, the ones where you hum and use your fingers to flick your lips up and down). Kind of like Grandpa Mike's trick, but Will does it himself. Sometimes he can stay entertained and make this noise for a good half hour or so.