Christmas at Grandma Adeline's

We celebrated Christmas at Grandma Adeline's on the day before Christmas Eve. Many (but certainly not all!) of the great grandchildren gathered for a group picture. Rowan was a little slow to warm up to everyone. The party was during his usual naptime, so he was tired and a bit overwhelmed by all of the people.


He wasn't too fond of Santa, either. But that's to be expected from a 1-year-old. Maybe he'll have more fun next year!

World's Largest Gingerbread House

Before Christmas, we visited the world's largest gingerbread house with my mom, my sister and baby Maddox. Rowan enjoyed seeing the Santa's workshop display inside (the elves moved!). We also did some shopping and hit the jackpot when William's Sonoma had large samples of their molton chocolate cake. Yummmm! Rowan enjoyed it too!

Greetings from the Christmas Elf

Rowan looked like a little Christmas elf in his red pajamas and green bib on Christmas Eve morning at Grandma Michelle and Grandpa Rob's house.

So, we had him play the part in front of the Christmas tree and snapped some pics. Sooooo cute!
We'll have lots more Christmas pics soon!

Taking After Mama and Grandma Connie

Rowan definitely likes chocolate. Until now, we've been living in that blissful time before children understand the difference between regular old food and treats. Now, Rowan is starting to realize that brownies and chocolate cake = yum. So we're having to be more careful about eating treats ourselves, which isn't too hard since we rarely have sugar around here (except for my homemade brownies;-).

Grandma Michelle (who's not so much a chocolate lover, but a great baker) made a wonderful homemade chocolate cake when we went up north after Thanksgiving. It had lots of high-quality French chocolate in it (and other wonderful ingredients). Yum! After a few bites, Rowan was practically howling at the moon. I guess he was making up for eating NONE of his vanilla birthday cupcake.



Maddox, unfortunately, was still too young to partake. Poor kid! You'll get there someday, I promise!

Of course, we don't plan on feeding Rowan chocolate all the time, but the occasional homemade cake or brownie is a wonderful treat! And he really is still too young to whine or ask for treats, so we're lucky there. As long as he'll still eat blueberries and yogurt, I'll be happy to let him indulge from time to time (Lord knows I will). I found a recipe for healthy brownies that contain frozen spinach. Maybe we'll have to give those a try. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Play Time!

We recently brought Rowan to a cool indoor play park. He had so. much. fun. The park had a little toddler area, but Kyle also took Rowan through the larger climbing structure since there weren't many kids there when we visited. What a great way to work out all of that toddler energy!

Climbing through the mesh tube.

Bouncing in the inflatable castle.

Playing with the bead maze.

Climbing up the slide.

Looking for mama (boy, was he tired!).

We all kinda like each other!

Mmmmmmm Blueberries!

One of Rowan's favorite treats of late is defrosted organic blueberries. He giggles when they pop in his mouth and I say, "Ooooooh, that was a juicy juicy blueberry!" They make for quite a mess, though. Sometimes his lips will be purple for the rest of the day!

Rowan smiling in anticipation of a blueberry.

Rowan crushing a blueberry.

Rowan showing me how tough he is (hmmmm...still looks pretty sweet to me).