Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

We headed west for the holidays on December 18th. Having recently returned home from our Thanksgiving travels, Caden was very excited to get back on a jet. Caden has been talking a lot about "tunnels" lately, which are any passageways that he passes through. These include, but are not limited to, actual tunnels, overpasses (or sometimes even signs), and, especially, jetways. He eventually learned to call them jetways, but Caden was quite excited about the tunnels he had to pass through to get onto planes. And Dada had to chase him down a few times to make sure he didn't head down the wrong tunnel.

We spent five days in Sonoma County, working on Mama and Dada's research and trying to cure a case of pink eye that Caden had--with impeccable timing--brought home from school the day before we departed. Although the little guys had to be isolated from each other in their respective high chairs due to the high probability of contagion, we had a fun dinner with Randall, David, and James at our old haunt, the Union Hotel in Occidental. A real highlight of Caden's time in California was explorations of the Bodega Harbor intertidal zone with Dada. What 1.5-year-old wouldn't be excited at the prospect of turning over a rock to expose hundreds of wriggling, running isopods? He keeps talking about "ice-pods," and even found a dead fly on the windowsill and brought it over to Dada, saying "Dada, ice-pod!" Caden is very disappointed that there are no isopods to be found on New England rocky shores this time of year.

From there, we headed north to Oregon, where we spent a fun evening and day with Amy, Brian, and Owen before joining Mama's family for the Christmas festivities. Caden and Owen had a great time taking baths, reading stories, and playing the marimba (at the Portland Children's Museum--see Owen's blog for more pictures and a video) together. It was really fun to see their new home in Portland! We then headed over to Mama's uncle's place for the Godard holiday gathering before getting in the big blue car and heading south to Corvallis for Christmas.

Caden had a wonderful time at Ama and Adad's house, playing with Auntie Sally's toy kitchen and the other toys that we brought up out of storage. And he loved Christmas, from leaving snacks for Santa and the reindeer to opening his (and Dada's) many presents. Cousins Sandy and Juliana even came by on the 27th to play!


Playing the marimba with Owen
Reading with Ama and (Great) Ama Jean

Tuckered out after lots of present opening

Back in New England

It kind of feels like we've experienced about three seasons over the past week, with a bit of snow, then temperatures in the 'teens late last week, and balmy weather in the 50s right now. We're still enjoying our holiday-decorated house, and Caden had fun (for a while, before he got cold) playing in the new snow last week.

Caden's first snow angel
Making a snowman

A snowman family

Caden's Christmas train...

...and his new kitchen

Happy New Year!