The late holiday post

I apologize for the long draught between substantive updates. Of course, we remain pretty busy with Project Patrick, and his presence made the recent holidays pretty awesome. Not just for us, either. I think most everyone in our family and friends were stoked to have him around.

He doesn’t really know about Christmas, or why Mommy and Daddy put up a tree. And then took down the tree. Or why he received a bunch of presents. Or what presents are.

 
But he’s got a lot of potential as for as Christmas spirit goes. At the very least, he’s got the good cheer part down.

Patrick plays his first piano with some help from Uncle Scott.

We’re excited our picture quality should be improving considerably in the new year. Jordan’s dad bought us a new camera: a Nikon D5000, and while we’re still learning the ropes, even its autofocus function is a big improvement over our old Canon point-and shoot.  Witness the great shot above, which is probably the best pic from our batch of holiday photos.

We were pretty excited to spend time with our extended family, in Bastrop and in Houston, and as expected, we had a blast:

 We wore awesome new Christmas / Winter clothes.

 
We met some new friends.

We ate like kings (and queens).

Jordan baked dessert.

 
We opened presents. The grandparents got just what they wanted: PoP (Pictures of Patrick).

And we bridged generations, with great-grandsons and great-grandmothers.

Pretty great, huh? But it’s always a stressful time, too, during the holidays. And sometimes money is tight. And sometimes it’s hard driving around to see everyone and deciding where to spend that first Christmas morning with the baby.

And sometimes the wind blows so hard that it threatens to wreck your temporary outside dining room, where you were planning to feed 25 people who came into town for what might be her last Christmas.

But as we’ve seen recently, nature can do much worse.

Here’s to you and yours. From ours. Blessing your first Christmases. And your last.