Ice Skating

We took Linus ice skating for the first time. Friends told us about a wonderful lake in Evergreen that offers ice skating. It was a beautiful setting. Linus' first time on the ice started with a fall. Why? Because he jumped off the last step down onto the ice. He slipped and crashed right down. It was hard for me to keep from laughing. I helped him up and told him that he'd learned his first lesson: don't jump down onto the ice. He was really nervous about it in the beginning and after a trip to the bathroom within five minutes of our starting to skate, he started in asking for snack. We had to cheer him on and encourage him to keep trying. By the time we left he still needed to hold on to one of us, but he wasn't as nervous and proclaimed it "fun."

Cookie Party Photos

Our friend, Lon, took these photos at our cookie party. He has a fancy camera and I asked him to photograph the happenings as a favor to me.

Christmas Roundup 2009

We celebrated a quiet Christmas at home, preceded by numerous holiday gatherings with friends. We attended a singing party at Lon's and Wendy's. She is a pianist and hosted a party at which we all gathered around her piano and sang Christmas carols. Linus was the only kid there for much of the evening. He danced the Nutcracker while we sang. He was also alone in the living room with the desserts, which suited him perfectly. We hosted our second annual Christmas cookie party and had four cookie sheets in rotation for several hours. Linus has gotten quite good at making cut-out cookies and ate many that afternoon. Baby Grace was less interested in the cookies and had more fun walking, walking, walking. She is too cute for words.

We had snow twice in the days leading up to Christmas and on Christmas Eve the three of us went sledding in City Park. We had a blast and Linus was kind enough to share his sled with us on a couple of runs. We all returned home with very rosy cheeks.

Linus has been building things all week with his new toys and inventing his own rules to his games. He continues to tell me that he had fun opening presents on Christmas. A few days later we went out to Parker to celebrate with Martha and Bill and Linus got a chance to sled there, too.

I'm now thinking about taking Linus ice skating.

(In the family photo we are modeling our scarves from Betsy.)