Chapter 423

Happy birthday to Kyle!

&

Happy 35th birthday to Chris! 

After spending the morning running all over town looking for a twin bed for Reagan, we finally gave up and came home. I sat down, grabbed my laptop and opened Facebook. The first thing that popped up was this captain's bed with a really nice mattress for a really nice price just a couple of blocks away. We retrieved it from the neighbor and, with the kid's help, installed it upstairs. It was a tough job since it is a captain's bed. We topped it off with Auntie Kyanne's childhood sheets, her Mom's lamp from when she was little, and Reagan's tent and it was ready to go for it's first night.

She loved it! Who wouldn't love their own cozy tent to sleep in?

Does this look like the face of someone who wants to go to sleep? I don't think so but I do think it's the face of her Aunt Chelsea when she was the same age.

I made Reagan a felt Christmas tree last year. This year she really understood what it was and how to put the vitamins  ornaments on the tree. As good as Reagan's speech and vocabulary is, she kept getting the words "vitamins" and "ornaments" mixed up. It seems weird to me since I don't see any connection between those words.

Nitro, however, has a different idea what he is supposed to be doing with this Christmas tree. He like to undecorate it, waaay up high the bat the pieces all around the house, specifically under the sofa where they are hard to retrieve. I really had expected Reagan to be the one doing this.

Reagan stayed with us while Mom and Dad went to a military Christmas party of some sort. The dinner theme was "orange" and she had carrots, oranges, and spaghetti. Here she's showing me a carrot slice.

Then we decorated our tree and Reagan loved unwrapping our ornaments to see what was inside each little paper-towel bundle. Despite warnings to be gentle, we had a couple of incidents but zero fatalities so it was a good time.

After ornaments Reagan hung the ribbon garland...all at the same level, on the same branches all the way around the tree.

She found this ornament of her Mommy and Daddy and her in the hospital and loved it. It had to hang on a "special" place on the tree, the criteria for "special" known only to her and located above and to the left of her head in this photo. Any other ornaments she deemed worthy, also had to hang around her baby ornament in the "special" place.

 I asked her to put the bells (cat alarms) all around the bottom branches of the tree. Apparently just this one section of bottom branches were "special" since they got all of the cat alarm bells.

Reagan putting up more garland around the tree at the same latitude as before.

Chris and Roo are minimalists and didn't want anything beside their Pt. Defiance Zoo family pass. To help keep things even, I thought I'd remind them that they also got free granddog/daughter sitting throughout the year while Kyanne and Ryan got presents. I had visions of getting a cute picture of Reagan and Bear sitting in front of the tree to complete this task. I had special jammies all picked out for the event, made a couple of big bows for the happy couple and headed for the tree.  The thing is, Reagan was in the "witching hour" and it was iffy if she'd cooperate long enough that I could pull this off. To start with, Reagan didn't want to wear the jammies because she'd "get too sweaty", so back on with the owl jammies and pick up the plan there. This was not a plan that was ever going to go smoothly. This is the best picture I got and it went downhill from there.

We had a good photo set up and Reagan decided to move the bow to the top of Bear's head at the last minute.

Then the bow got shredded. This bow was supposed to go on Uncle Ryan's package after the photo shoot!

I couldn't get all parties to focus, point the same direction, or stand still at the same moment.

Post photo shoot casualties. Sorry to Uncle Ryan for the loss of the bow for his present.

We were supposed to meet Great-Grampa and the gang at Kyanne's today for a pre-Christmas before she heads to Arizona to have Christmas with Ryan's parents and lots of sunshine and cactus. Sadly, Kyanne got sick at the last minute and so we stayed here for faux Christmas. We all had a good time but really missed Kyanne. I'm hoping she is up and feeling better before she flies off to Arizona this week.  We plan on having Christmas Part Deux in January.

The guys play with Reagan's new toy as she watches on. Come on guys, let the girls play!

After presents, we had a birthday pie for Chris while Grampa carries on the family tradition of main-lining whipped cream right into Reagan just like he did for her mommy.

Great-Grampa joined us for dinner and presents and we all had a great-time.

My on-the-fly centerpiece made from fresh holly and cedar greens from the back yard. It wasn't as pretty as the picture of Kyanne's table she had set for all of us, but it added a bit of Christmas cheer to the table.

As you can see, Bob just can't leave his Jaguars alone. This project is painting the firewall and frame to match the car. This requires the stripping all the bits off the front of the car so he can access the areas that need paint. Paint that has to be special ordered and waited for because he ran out of his existing paint.

Have the best week you can have with all those Christmas chores ahead of you!