Happy 34th Birthday, J!

J turned 34 this month. We had two celebrations, one with J's parents on Friday and another with my parents when they came in town for the weekend. Here we are getting ready to have J blow out the candles on the awesome chocolate peanut butter cake J's dad made for him.

And here we are with my parents enjoying cupcakes my parents brought from the West Side Market as well as cupcakes J and R picked out at SAS (a local fancy cupcake place we really like).

Unfortunately SAS is "refining" their vegan cupcake recipe so they're not selling vegan cupcakes for the time being, so J is blowing out a candle on a non-vegan cupcake that, obviously, he couldn't eat. Boo. He still enjoyed opening presents--I got him a Harry Potter lego set and a vegan crockpot cookbook and he got a new belt from his parents and some really nice clothes from my parents.

"Wat DAT!?"

Not the best video, but for months now we have been saying we need to get a video of RUS saying his favorite thing in the whole world, "WAT DAT??" He said it at dinner one evening so I grabbed the camera and tried to get him to say it again. He does, but not exactly the way he normally says it. But, close enough. I've been remiss about recording videos of him talking and it's one of my goals since everyone says his talk is so cute. Especially since it took him so long to really get going with it.

January Nap

Taking down the Christmas tree

We took down the tree on New Year's Day. It was quite the traumatic experience. R didn't want to say goodbye to Christmas. :(

The tree looks so empty!

And just for fun, one of my favorite vintage ornaments saved from when J was a little kid. We obviously fold it back up every year when we put it away. I remember these being big when I was little although I don't have any left from back then.

Happy New Year's Eve!!

Grammie and Grampie came over and celebrated New Year's Eve with us. We had our usual appetizers for dinner. After dinner Grammie and I opened a bottle of wine we received at our Christmas Open House and Grampie brought over some beer and we all sat around and colored pictures from R's new big coloring book she got for Christmas.