Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur

Mom, Helen, and Grandma made a number of confections this holiday season. Sugar cookies were made and decorated, and Grandma and Helen embarked on creating candy sleighs, which turned out pretty well.

This year, Grandpa, Uncle Gus, and I took Helen to San Jose's Christmas in the Park, so that Helen could meet Santa. We were a little anxious about it since last year didn't go so well, but this year Helen was excited, and on track. She patiently waited in line with us, and had a good discussion with Santa about what she wanted. On our way out she rode on the carousel with Uncle Gus and took a whirl in a teacup ride with me.

Another year at the ACCC, another fun-filled Winter Pageant.

A conversation in the car this morning:

Helen: You are a tasty treat!
Me: Are you calling your brother a tasty treat?
Helen: Yes!
Arthur: Guh!
Me: (laughing) He'd be kind of hard to eat, don't you think?
Helen: (unintelligible) .. fall out.
Me: Something would fall out?
Helen: His bones would fall out.
Me: His bones would fall out if we ate him?
Helen: Yes.
Me: That wouldn't be very good.
Helen: No, it wouldn't

This arrived in the mail from Grandma Amy. Too bad we didn't have it in time for our Christmas card photo.

This year, Ames had a family event that we went to.

Helen was very excited about the Christmas decorations this year, almost too excited, as she couldn't hardly help herself from playing with them once she hung them on the tree. I'm sure to Arthur they were simply one more set of wondrous, shiny objects.

An early Christmas gift in the form of a Rock Band instrument set arrived from Uncle Gus today, and Helen really loved playing guitar.

I have been back over a week and am slightly ashamed of my failure to report to you, my dear friends and family. My poor excuse is that in that week Ross left town, Arthur got another tooth, we all got sick, and I slept less than 4 hours a night. I wanted to wait until I stopped hallucinating before writing this.

We had planned to have Helen's party at the park, but the weather was rainy, so at the last minute we decided to just have it at the house. This meant that Rachel and I had been planning on the Park (and had been neglecting the house that week what with Halloween and all), and then had to scramble to clean and come up with things to keep the kids occupied inside the house. Things worked out fine, the kids all got to wear their costumes one last time, we had some party games, but the kids mostly played with each other and Helen's toys. The rain let up enough for us to have the pinata outside and for some kids to play in the back yard a bit. Arthur even managed to wear someone's Batman mask for a bit.