2009 Holiday Update

As I mentioned in the previous post, there has been a lot going on. The first was the big snowstorm (SnOMG as one news blog in DC put it) on the weekend of December 18-20. The weekend started with a great "freshmen dorm reunion" dinner with Veronica & Josh, Jen & Brendan, and Kristin (who was in town from the UK). Everyone is so happy and doing so well :-). We had terrific Mexican food followed by some cupcakes ;-). We decided on Thursday that we would probably not be leaving the house during the storm on Saturday and stocked up on food and baking supplies. When we finally woke up (around 11am), there was already 9 inches of snow!










Stephen had to go outside to shovel a walkway so that Madison, with her 5 inch legs, could get out to use the restroom










Which was successful: .














Mueller was especially excited about the snow and bounded through like a little bunny. Sadly for him, but hilariously for us, he is nothing like a bunny and his bounding jumps were really funny to watch. He also kept losing his ball in the snow which really frustrated him (to say the least).




We baked molasses cookies and biscotti and watched movies and basketball. When all was said and done, we had about 15 inches of snow! It took about an hour to clean off the car and clear the sidewalk in front of the house, but walking around the neighborhood Sunday afternoon there were many uncleaned sidewalks and cars still piled high with snow, which just froze and got more difficult to clear the next day, so we were glad we (well, mostly Stephen) did it.

After our fun in the snow, we headed up to Massachusetts for the holidays and got to spend lots of long-awaited time with Debbie, Alex, Carrie, Geoff, Amelia, and Owen. We lounged around the house, played with the kids, only had to go to the mall once, wrapped lots of gifts, and ate tons of delicious food. Stephen and Geoff caught a Celtics game (and picked up Celtics attire for the children and child-to-be) and we got to see the kids in Boston at the Stimello Christmas Party (see facebook for pics). Christmas started a bit early (6:19am thanks to a very excited little 2 3/4 year old), but it was worth getting up early because Santa was very good to everyone.


We got down to NY in time to hang out with Joey and Meg before Joey left for the ship on Sunday morning and then had a mini-Christmas celebration at Grandma & Grandpa's house where we were again overwhelmed with great gifts.

On the way back to DC, we stopped in and saw Stephen's grandparents, so we got ANOTHER Christmas celebration. Overall, our week of travel and holiday celebrations was fantastic-- we got to relax some and were surrounded by our families.


On the pregnancy front, the only news to report is that the bump is now babybump-like rather than too-much-beer-and-pizza-like, which means that I can wear tighter tops again! This effectively triples my wardrobe (it would be more, but not all tight shirts are appropriate these days) and encourages more bump pictures. Here I am at 21 weeks 1 day:


We got a fabulous SLR camera so we can take (and post, obv) high-quality baby photos. In the meantime, we've taken many pictures of Mueller and Madison. Unfortunately, we have not downloaded the software so we have not been able to get the pictures off the new camera yet...so check back soon!