Favorite Holiday Photos: Ohio

In no particular order, here are some favorite family pictures from our Ohio trip.

My mom, Cali, Li'l Tyke, R, and my dad--just a nice picture of them all.
I absolutely love this picture of Surf and my father making Li'l Tyke laugh. The entire time we were there, we kept trying to come up with things that would get him to just laugh and laugh. What usually worked was finding some phrase that you could say repeatedly, and loudly, right to his face. "Merry Christmas!" worked very well, as did "Yes, sir!" and "There you are!" and "Calm down!" among others.
In this picture, R is "smiling". She squints her eyes shut like this when she's trying to really smile. (Kind of like our other nephew G used to smile with what I sometimes call the "Beast" smile.)
This next picture was taken the night Surf and Cali arrived. Surf was checking out my parents' tree and laughing at all the old ornaments. A lot of them are actually ornaments we kids made at school. The one he's holding has a picture of Geg on it in these too-short blue sweatpants and a teenage mutant ninja turtles long-sleeve t-shirt, on a paper cup covered in tin foil and hung with a pipe cleaner. Remember those elementary school arts and crafts? My parents still have them and hang them on their tree every year, when most parents probably threw those things out the minute they came home from school. Note, too, the angel at the top of the tree. She is wearing a knitted hat that used to be a christmas ornament in the colors of a high school my dad used to coach at. It got put on the angel's head when the last strands of her hair finally fell off.
Ok, in terms of picture quality this one isn't the best, but I love that my dad looks like he is really talking on a plastic green phone.

AND MORE TO COME...