the rest

I guess it's about time to finish up with our exciting time with family around Christmas. We didn't really do too many exciting things (a brand new baby and a fairly sore new mom probably didn't help), we mostly just hung out together at my parent's house. We did head to the church to play some basketball, Tatum and I were the cheerleaders. We walked around the shops in uptown Mt. Vernon. We visited Amish country and on the way we stopped at our house to hang out for a few hours. I got Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy for the Wii from my in-laws so we tried those out. Jade and Papa were Wheel of Fortune partners...here they are trying hard to solve the puzzle together.
Everyone headed to our house again when the Hawkeye bowl game was on and we were the only ones that had the right channel. We managed to squeeze in some Band Hero before the disappointing game.

Ben and Jade rocking out on the drums.

Earlier that day we hit up Coralridge Mall for free night at the Children's Museum. Jade also got to ride the carousel with Grandma.
One day a good friend of the family watched all the kids (minus Tatum) so that we could all go out to lunch at Biaggi's. It was a really fun afternoon together.
We went to a New Year's Eve party at the church. Tatum was unusually fussy that night so we ended up leaving early and rang in the new year at my parent's house. We totally weren't paying attention and ended up ringing in the new year about 3 or 4 minutes late. It was really quite anticlimactic, I wonder why I used to think New Year's was so cool....Anyway here's our little family at midnight.
The rest of our time was spent playing tons of games, eating way too much food and enjoying lots of snuggles with the wee one.

Just chillin' on Papa's shoulder.

Every once in awhile she manages to find her thumb but it is always in this strange way.

Lucky for Tatum her aunt Mara also has a knack for falling asleep anywhere, anytime.

Hanging out with dad, who looks a little tired. :)

Mara insisted this was Tatum's favorite position and it always made me laugh to watch her like this. I finally managed to get a picture of it at the end of the week.

It was a really fun week and I am glad I finally got around to at least kind of documenting what we did. It never seems to matter how much or how little we do, it is just so much fun to be with family. We sure missed those who couldn't be there and can't wait until we are all together again this summer!

p.s. Tatum is one month old today! It is hard to believe. It's amazing to see how much she has grown and changed in this first month. We sure do love her.