Month: January 2009

Christmas 2008: More Pictures

Leilani had a lot of fun playing with Grandma Rosemary and Grandpa Jim in Austin.

It didn’t take Grandpa very long to learn the chase-Leilani-around-the-house game. Leilani liked to hike in the pantry, but then always came out because she likes being scared.

How much longer is she going to be a little bundle who likes to snuggle after her bath?

Grandma had a great painting easel for Leilani to play with and the perfect aprons. She painted pictures of Mommy and Daddy hiking on the mountain while we were away.

One night we went out for vegetarian BBQ (don’t ask) and the smarter people got pasta. Leilani likes showing off her bad manners.

And Daddy doesn’t think Mommy was helping. She called this feeding the baby bird.

When Mommy was off shopping at craft-store-heaven and Daddy was babysitting, we played much nicer games like dress up the animals…

… and build the princess castle.

The doll in these two pictures is Madeline, a present from Grandma that Leilani loves. She still loves being read stories, and Grandpa Jim is good at reading children’s books.

Leilani also helps out in the kitchen when she’s in a good mood. Grandma’s hand-cranked cranberry grinder is still as much fun as Andy remembers from when he was a kid.

We got this at a candy store in Fredericksburg for Leilani.

Big Mistake. She was happy with it, but we weren’t happy with the effect that sugar and artificial ingredients have on her.

And then Uncle David arrived and it was time for Christmas number 3.

There were a few more rounds of presents, and Leilani still had to help Grandpa.

The goggles are for a 3-D calendar of Mars.

David got Leilani a great puzzle, the biggest she’s ever had.

Like many of her toys, she had to try it out right away.

Books …

Huge cauliflower in Grandpa Jim’s garden that we ate later.

And ever since then, Leilani always asks if the cauliflower we eat is coming from Grandpa’s garden.

Leilani likes to help dig holes in the garden and pull up radishes.

… more books …

Another perfect gift from Grandma: (Noah and) animal stickers. We’ve read the story of Noah to her in one of her little Golden Books, and she made this picture all by herself.

… and even more books.

One last family portrait under the Christmas tree. Andy does the self-timer and barely makes it into the first picture.

Our new family tradition seems to be Raclette cheese dinner for the holidays (oops, not pictured here).

Thanks everyone for the great time in Austin.

Christmas 2008: Parent’s day off

We left Leilani for a night with her grandparents and went to Fredricksburg, a German-founded little town a 2-hour drive away, had really fake german food (actually, it was not that bad, had I not expected German flavors and rainbow trout but American flavors and fried pollock), watched a movie, spent the night at a very nice bed and breakfast, visited local parks and churches and went on a hike at the enchanted rock.

It’s a charming downtown with old storefronts full of antique and tourist shops. But it’s still nice to walk around and it was nicely decorated for Christmas.

The bakery had the winner of the ginger-bread house contest, and as much as we were trying to do adult things, we couldn’t help but think that Leilani would’ve liked it.

Unlike other American towns it has a nice Marktplatz, and many other little details reminiscent of the German heritage. Apparently, you could hear native German speakers in town up until the 1950’s. On the Marktplatz was a Maibaum sculpture that showed the history of the town.

We went back to the Markplatz by day and looked around some more. This statue commemorates the agreement that the German settlers had with the original Indian tribes to use the land, the only one in the US that the white man did not break.

Then we went to look at the painted church in town. Some of the Czech settlements in the area are famous for the churches painted all over inside, but the Germans still had a nice church. I think it was mostly the German Catholics who left Germany and came to the US.

The stained glass windows were very colorful, and we took pictures for Leilani who likes them.

Then we headed out to Enchanted Rock State Park, the whole excuse for this trip. It’s only 400 feet (120 m) high, but it’s a beautiful pink granite monolith that is exposed in this near-desert.

You can hike anywhere you want, and it’s fun climbing around on the various rocks.

We avoided the crowds on the main trail and walked up the bare rock on the back side, where it got rather steep at times.

We did find the cave, which is a huge crack in the rock filled with large boulder that you can climb between, but somebody had said we wouldn’t need flashlights on this trip.

The top of the rock is flat, and thanks to the recent rains, there were pretty pools of water everywhere, each with their own little microcosm.

Christmas 2008: Austin City Lights

Most of these were taken on 37 1/2 Street.

Strange Christmas decorations…

Strange Christmas tree…

Christmas 2008: Austin Children’s Museum

Storytime!

There were flying pigs!!! First the kids had to clip them on and pull them up…

…and then catch them. That’s harder than it looks. Leilani took turns with a bigger boy, they spent probably 15 minutes on that.

Trains!

The rest of us got to play too.

Looking through my daughter’s eyes…

Leilani’s loves to take pictures. We often take the camera away from her, because she tends to mistreat it, but she takes good pictures by now. She mainly photographs people…

… and things any three year old loves…

…but she also has some very funky random art pictures. Andy thought I should not photoshop these at all, but on most I did minimal correcting and cropping…

…I’m not quite certain what’s up with that, but pretty much every time she gets a hold of the camera she takes a photo of her feet.

(I just include this as proof that some other people who study photography also do this :)

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