As Promised...

Well, indeed we have a load of pictures from the past few weeks. Rhianwen had a great Christmas. Once she figured out about the gifts, every gift was greeted with an excited, "Oo, wow oowow ooowow!!"

Hugging her new baby doll.

Mom has been making sock monkeys lately. My parents love their sock monkeys so much that they are taking them whenever they travel and take pictures of them everywhere (kinda like the Travelocity gnome). We decided it would be fun to hide their monkeys different places over the holiday. Once, I posed dad's monkey reading his book, most amusing. On Christmas Eve while my parents were at a really late candlelight service at their Episcopal church, we hid their monkeys in their bed. Then on Christmas morning all of the fam's monkeys appeared. Dad said, "Well, last night we found 2 monkeys in our bed, and I guess they were up to some monkey business!" as he observed all of the monkeys hanging around!

Sock monkeys that my mom made for each person in the fam (notice Skipper's camo).


Rhianwen's monkey (no not Uncle Christopher, the one with the fluffy tassels on her hat).

A new take on rocking horse use.

For those of you who have been looking at our blog for a while, this is back at Collins Park going down the really big metal slide. Rhianwen climbed up all by herself (with daddy right behind) unlike last year! It's amazing how much changes in one year. It makes me think twice about laughing when she does something totally uncoordinated when I know I could never grow and mature so much in one year now.

Rhianwen had a hard time warming up to Great Grandpa. We decided that maybe it was the lack of hair, and Great Grandpa decided to pull out a wig (why did they have such a thing?) to see if it would help. Wally said if Great Grandpa came in on Christmas wearing it then all the grandchildren should all go in a corner and cry!

Great Grandma.

As an alternative, Great Grandpa also brought a big cowboy hat that Wally decided to give a try.

Once we got home, we celebrated our Christmas. Rhianwen really loves her new swing and slide. She's started saying, "Wing, wing!" and another new word that we also "got" for Christmas is "Rain! Rain!" and "Boots! Boots!" She even got to wear her new raincoat and boots (boots from Grandma Nanny Kim) for real use. the funny thing about the boots was that Grandma Nanny Kim's cat is called Boots, and there was a point when we were talking about Boots a lot and Rhianwen looked a little confused b/c she new we were talking about the cat but also seemed to be talking about boots.

Swinging.

Finding finger holds (what a budding rock climber!). She got up there all by herself.

Sliding.

Next was a trip to the T side of the fam. We had a lot of fun exploring the yard, including seeing chickens up close and fireworks and sparklers at midnight for New Years (Rhianwen missed out as she was in bed for the fireworks, but Grandaddy set one off especially for her when we left).

The T and extended clan.

Back home we are still proud Tigers despite the loss to Auburn.


Lastly (if you've managed to weed through this far), we would love prayer for Rhianwen's surgery. Her pre-op appt is on Monday and if she is deemed healthy, she will have her surgery on Tuesday. We are still having lots of second thoughts about it seeing as all the docs say not to worry that the lump is nothing really bad, but since no one really knows what it is other than to say that it could get infected, we've decided it's better to know it's not a bad thing for sure. I am tempted to think if she is healthy, it's almost like a sign from God that we should do the surgery since she has had a cold non-stop since Thanksgiving and has finally stayed healthy for 2 weeks now! I just can't wait until it is over. I just pray that it will go well with no complications and she won't be scarred for life against doctors.

(P.S. I'm experimenting with pics and websites since Dropshots has quit working for me for no reason....sorry about the wide variety on this post!)