A Very Burwell Christmas

We had Christmas with the Burwell side of the family when we got back from CA and it was such a nice evening! A great dinner with left over Christmas desserts and presents. It's always so great to experience Christmas in your childhood home. I love the smell of the Douglas Fir Tree. For me, that is the smell of Christmas!
Hello? Tim? Are you back there? This ended up being the Shop Vac that Tim has been waiting for.

My mom found this awesome hat for Samuel which he is in love with and wears every where.

I thought this was cool because we have a similar picture of Samuel playing with the light up Santa on his first Christmas. I'm not sure how far this thing dates back, however I do know that it was in my bedroom window when I was a little girl. Laura had that light up Snow man in her window but I haven't seen that one in years.

Lillie got these boots from my mom abd they are her #1 shoe now. The only time she's not wearing them is when she is wearing her new princess slipper from Auntie Katie.

Merry Christmas everyone!

New Year's Day... Happy Birthday Harry!

Every year on New Year's Day/ Harry's Birthday the Doolittle's have a fun tradition that includes, lots of yummy food, football, and family. It was a lot of fun just relaxing and hanging out with the fam on our last day in Cali. The kids especially loved that there was a table full of food and goodies they could fill up on all day without having to ask. They would wander out, fill their plates up with Salami, pickles, and chocolate...yum... and wander back to their room to watch a variety of T.V. Kid Heaven. The rest of us had a great day too! Uncle Gene came down for a visit and met both Samuel and Grant for the first time and Elisabeth and Luka came down too. The kids were glad to have someone their age to play with again and Luka and Samuel really hit it off.

It was really great to be able to celebrate Harry's birthday in person again this year!

651? Or 6(5+1)? 66? There you go! Creative candle fix.

Here are the kids throwing the ball to Sandy. They loved that dog. Poor Sandy, I bet she's still sleeping it off. Those kids had her constantly running. Not to mention Grant, who by the way loved all of the animals! He thought they were hilarious!

Grant took to Uncle Gene right away!

Samuel also loved Uncle Gene and was epsecially happy when he got down on his level to play trains. We were really glad to be able to visit with him again.

These boys did a pretty good job playing together! They were sharing here. not fighting!

Montery, and the Cal Train

We spent a day in Monterey with Lillie, Samuel, Jason, and Becca. Grant spent the day in Morgan Hill with Grandma and Grandpa. Okay, so the weather was absolutely gorgeous! We all had a fanastic time and the clam chowder was magnifique!
I love you babe! (side note: sea lions were also missing here)

We took a 2 mile ride on a surrey and had a blast! Okay, so it was hard work but still super fun! I think my favorite part (besides the part where Tim had to swing his leg over the post and almost lost his leg! the kids were cracking up too!) was when Tim and Jason started waving their arms and cawing like birds as though we were flying the dang thing. So we all joined in and were cheered on to go faster by others on the path. Those brothers are crazy when they get together! Let's go get some lunch... We're starving after all that pedaling!

Cal Train - This was the thing that has most plagued the ears of Tim and I since June. Lillie came back and told Samuel how she was able to ride a real train that had 2 stories and he asked/threw fits every. single. day. about how he wanted to ride it too. So here we are. He was pretty stoked (it was awesome) because there was a real train station just like on Thomas with tunnels underneath the ground to get to different platforms. It was well worth the wait!

Racing to Platform 2 We rode through 2 zones and it took about an hour and a half. This was how he was the entire time... pointing out junctions, engines, cabooses, you name it. He was in train heaven!

San Francisco

Going to San Francisco was my most anticipated "tourist day" of the trip. It is one of my all time favorite cities and I hadn't been back since Tim and I were married. It was superbly cold, but everyone handled it really well! It was just busy enough to be exciting without having to worry too much about the kids.
In front of the Huge Tree and the head of Pier 39

I love you Grandma! Grant had such a great time with Dianne over the holidays. She took such great care of him many times while Tim and I took the kids places and they formed such a sweet bond! Here they're waiting while L and S are on the carousel.

Pier 39 carousel. Lillie had been telling Samuel about this since she rode it in June and they were both excited to ride. And luckily the 2nd level was open this time!

Lillie giving a dollar to the street perfomer. She was pretty nervous to do this so I was proud of her for getting up her nerve.

Samuel, now done with his street vendor corndog (best corndog ever! I swear!) delighted the birds with some of daddy's sourdough bread bowl.
Samuel with one of the MUNI cars. These were really awesome restored cable cars and even better, they were free. This was the best picture I could get of Samuel since he was in a somewhat grumpy mood at this point in the day. He had fun riding though!

Everyone, miuns me! at Pier 39.

Where did all the Sea Lions go? A few days after Thanksgiving the famous SF sea lions took off in droves. No one knows where they went or if they'll be back. Dissapointing, yes. But there were three that we were able to look at. And luckily SF holds all sorts of other awesome stuff for us to do.

Ghiradelli square, yum! We had promised the kids chocolate and they happened to be giving out free samples of peppermint bark... somehow the kids were satisfied with that and didn't seem to expect anything else... I love it when that happens!

Grant with some great SF background. He spent practically his whole day in the stroller and barely complained...what a sweetie!

Who doesn't want ice-cream when it's 30 degrees and windy?

Best Mother-in-Law ever!

Good Night. Grant finally crashed around 4pm when Grandma and Grandpa (who were on baby duty) bought him an SF hoodie to cuddle with. Nice and toasty!

Christmas in the Park ~ San Jose, CA

We went to San Jose for the day to their Christmas in the park with Grandma and Grandpa. We rode the light rail down which appeased Samuel for a time who had been begging to ride the CalTrain. While there, they also had a street fair so we bought wrist bands for the kids and I (Samuel couldn't go on anything by himself) and they had a blast!

Here's G with hid favorite person in the whole entire world! He and Tim just love each other so much! They are so much fun to watch.

G-ma, G-pa, Lillie, and Grant on Christmas tree lane.

This was one of Lillie's favorite rides and I think she rode it three times! I took Samuel once, and it was fun I'll admit, but I coudln't handle it more than once!

Yeah, I tried standing next to them on the merry-go-round, until it actually started.... that thing went so fast it was all I could do to slip and stummble my way to a horse before I fell off. And the horses went up and down quickly too! I'm glad Tim was not inspired to take a picture of me as I fell off twice before I finally got up there!

This was Samuel's favorite "ride" It was this huge series of steps, ramps, suspension bridges, and obstacle course type things as you wound your way up to the Super Duper Slide. It was the first thing that he saw that he wanted to do and I think we did this one about 5 times. Okay, it was fun for me too....

Tim snagged some pics of me with what he termed my "new boyfriend" Ha. Ha. This was the last ride the kids were on and Bubba here started talking to me immediately. I found out EVERYTHING about his personal life. And the ride was so dang long! He kept talking and I kept thinking "can you pay attention your job and turn the ride off? I think the kids are getting kind of bored since they've been riding around in circles for 10 minutes now...."

Peek-a-boo I see you! This is Grant's new game which he is very good at. Grandma and Grandpa did a great job keeping him occupied with it while we waited for the light rail.

I just thouht this was such a sweet picture! And Grant looks exactly like Tim's baby pictures so I thought it was a cool time warp kind of picture.

What a great day!

Okay, so this pic is separate even though it was taken on the same day b/c it represents a different day. Dianne treated Lillie, Becca, and I to a performance of the Nutracker by the San Jose Ballet on Christmas Eve. It was a beautiful performance and we all loved it! But Lillie was entranced. She had never been to anything like that and I was a little nervous if she would stay interested. I had nothing to fear. She was rapt with attention from the start. She comented constantly about what was happening and she hummed to all the music. Unfortunately it was the only day I didn't bring my camera! She here she is with the giant Nutcracker statue so we can all remember the day. She was really excited when she saw this and waiting all day to get a picture.

Christmas in Cali

This year our family traveled to California for a much anticipated vacation with the Doolittle side of the family. We'd been planning it since July and L and S asked about it every....single.....day. Multiple times. So, we were very glad on many levels when the time actually came! The traveling part went pretty well. There was one hiccup at the airport on the way out where the plane was delayed and we spent 4 hours in the the airport. However, everyone did great. The airport was dead and our gate was directly across from a store so L and S wandered between there, the bathroom, and our seats with no complaining. And poor G was so tired but Dad walked him up and down the terminal for about three hours and that kept him calm. Luckily it was a straight, non-full flight. So L and S watched movies with me and Tim got G to sleep. (Huge miracle!) But we made it. Then we had to encounter the 2 hour time difference, which we anticipated, however, it still majorly sucked. The kids were up at 4:30 every morning for the first week so we were pretty pooped. But they worked the kinks out eventually. We had such a great time with Grandma and Grandpa. And Uncle Brian, Uncle Jason, and Aunt Becca were all able to come too so we had such a great time. (We missed you Barnes Family!) I'm breaking this in to multiple posts b/c there are too many pictures and I don't do smilebox or anything b/c I like to turn these in to blog books. Any way, here goes.....



Here's Lillie spreading the reindeer mix to lure them to our home and keep them occupied whilst Santa delivers the goods....

Lillie again, modeling her new Hello Kitty Christmas Eve pj's....

Good morning and Merry Christmas! It's about 6:45 here. I had been trying to hold them off in their bedrooms with snacks to let everyone sleep until a somewhat decent hour, but apparently I woke Harry when I was getting go-gurts from the kitchen and he barreled through the house and roused everyone out of bed! I thought it was funny, but I was also super glad that he was as excited as I was!

To Samuel: From: Santa - One "Spinning Thomas" This kid was stoked!

To: Lillie From: Santa - Girly Digital Camera - She's really good at taking pictures too!

To:Grant From: Santa - Rolling Animal Train. There are more animals that attach to the back and when you push the parrot it rolls on it's own. Grant loves it!

Uncle Brian gave the kiddos the attachable animals and I just thought this was so funny! He never noticed nor cared that this was attached to him!

Yeah! Treats for the kids! Merry Christmas Becca and Jason!

Thank you for the pj's G-ma and G-pa.... and wake up Uncle Brian, you're missing all the fun!

Light up Little Einstien toy from mom and dad. I love how his attention is so rapt.

Lillie also got makeup and a makeup case from mom and dad. Despite the fact that every present she got she actually asked for and wanted, this was the only thing that she really smiled and was excited about when she opened.
Merry Christmas Grandma and Grandpa! We hope you like the calendar!

Chillin' with Uncle Jason on my first Christmas morning.

I love you Grandpa

This has provided hours of play for Samuel already. It makes a lot of noise and unfortunately it served as a wake up alarm for the back part of the house unbeknownst to Samuel and us.... Sorry guys!

The boys, checking out their Christmas toys.

Grandma and Grandpa put a t.v. in Lillie and Samuel's room which they of course thought was great! Here they are watching either Hero of the Rails, or Barbie and the Christmas Carol.

The whole family enjoying Uncle Jason's new panini maker. Dang! Those were a couple of weeks of great sandwiches!
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that your day was beautiful. We are so blessed to be surrounded by so much love during this wonderful time of year. We were especially grateful to be able to celebrate with Grant this year, it being his 1st Christmas. We are so blessed to have him in our family! I am so grateful for the season each year were it is a little bit easier to feel the Spirit of Christ and meditate on our feelings for the marvelous gift from our Heavenly Father of the Savior of the World.