Christmas night...

We are so lucky to have such great friends here in Portland who have become like family to us. Tonight we were able to make it to Christmas Dinner with the Conways.


Sarah and Beau gave Avery this adorable shirt. She loved it so much she had to put it on as soon as she unwrapped it, and she would not take it off to go to bed tonight!



After dinner Jon and Beau played a little Wii. Avery thought she was playing too, but was really holding the baby monitor...

Here are a bunch of cute pictures of Avery with little Rory who turned 6 months old today. We asked Avery to give Rory a kiss, and she didn't choose his cheek or his mouth for a kiss, but instead kissed his back - too cute...

One quick family picture by the Conway's tree...

Avery never passes up a chance to ride a dog. Here she is with Dempsey The Dog (and Dempsey The Reindeer)...

Christmas morning...

Merry Christmas!!! We had a great morning together! Jon made a great breakfast, and Avery had so much fun with the presents that Santa (and our friends and family) brought for her!

Here we all are in our Christmas PJs!


Here's Avery playing with some of her new things...

She would not take this shirt off!!!

This is actually a present for Chloe The Cat...

Once the presents were all gone from under the tree, Avery finally figured out where Chloe has been hiding for the past week or two...

I think we took this one last week, but I didn't want to leave Trot out of our Christmas post...

Before Christmas...

Avery and I went for a walk to the park with our neighbor Michelle on Tuesday. It was so beautiful out. People were cross country skiing around the pond, and although the lake was mostly frozen over, Avery still got to see a couple of geese. She was so excited!!!

Apparently the walk was just what Michelle needed....about 12 hours later she went into labor with her 3rd baby boy. Jon and I were on call to watch their other little boys (Sam and Everett) so Avery had some playmates for Christmas Eve....

Here are the proud big brothers getting ready to go meet their new little brother (Nathan) on Christmas morning...

Snowy weekend...

We've had a great weekend stuck at home due to the snow. We've probably got about 8 inches so far. This is our fifth winter here, and this is the first time we've seen more than a light dusting of snow (which had usually melted within hours). Portland is just not prepared for snow since it normally doesn't get any. None of the roads are cleared, and they don't even use salt. Since we don't have chains to put on our tires, we're stuck at home.

Some of our brave friends ventured out to come see us. Here is Avery with her friend Hazel (apparently having a book club meeting)...



We also baked lots of Christmas cookies. Avery was a great help, although I'm not sure all the ingredients ended up in the bowl...

We bundled Avery up in her favorite snow suit (which we thought we'd only get to use up on Mount Hood!). Here is Jon giving Avery her first snowball. She now has a few in the freezer just in case this all melts away quickly...

I love this snow suit!!!

Sean and Mindy came over to watch the Patriots game this morning. Here's Sean with our little Christmas girls...

Baby Brady was born last week. Avery is not a big fan of her daddy holding another baby! But isn't Brady just adorable?!!

The guys bundled the girls up for some snowy fun....

There is a nice layer of ice on top of all of our snow. This was fun to pick up and throw for Trot to chase...

Avery and Delaney had a great time!

Avery at school...

Avery's teacher sent us this collage of pictures taken on a snow day last week. It was too cold to spend a lot of time outside, so they brought some snow inside to play with. My favorite is the top right picture...

Snow days...

We had a cold and snowy weekend...and it was so fun! It never snows here, so we're just so excited to get to play in the snow with Avery. Especially since she's obsessed with Frosty! Here are some pictures from the weekend...

Avery watching Avery....

I took this video last week when Avery first learned to say her ABC's all the way up to G. But she was not cooperating with singing them on queue...she just wanted to mess with the buttons on the video camera. So, I flipped the screen around so that she could see what I was taping. As you can see, that leads to some pretty funny acting....

Trip to Seattle...

We spent a couple of days in Seattle this weekend in what has become a new Horne family tradition - December in Seattle. Jon worked on Friday, so Avery and I went spent the day shopping and went on a boat cruise around the bay like we did last year. On Saturday, we all went to the Pike Place market for breakfast, then visited the Seattle Aquarium. Here are some pictures from the weekend....

On Friday night, Avery and I had dinner near our hotel and then walked around downtown where there was a Carrolling competition under all the Christmas lights. She walked around pointing out all the "santas" whenever she saw someone wearing a santa hat...

They had an exhibit where you could touch the starfish. Avery was so excited that she could splash in the wa-wa....

Avery LOVED the Nemo and Dori exhibit thanks to Grandma Connie! :)

Avery's on her way to being as tall as a shark! She's over 34 inches already...

Here are some pictures from our boat ride. We did a cruise around Lake Union last year when Avery was so little and not even crawling. This cruise around Elliott Bay was a much different experience. She was running all around the boat and I'm pretty sure she was trying to jump over board to play with the sea lions at one point. Here are some of the funny faces she was making at the beginning of the ride...

Jonah's visit to Avery's house...

Avery's classroom at the Nike Daycare has a stuffed monkey named Jonah. One of her teachers thought it would be a good idea if Jonah visited each of the kids houses so that we could document Jonah's adventures with each family to get to know more about each other.

Here are some photos from Jonah's visit to Avery's house over the past week. Avery took Jonah on lots trips to the park....


Avery showed Jonah her favorite thing about the park in our neighborhood...the 'quack quacks in the wa-wa'....

Avery and Jonah also played around in our backyard on the slide...

For Thanksgiving, we went to Sean and Mindy's house for dinner. Another couple with a daughter a couple months younger than Avery was there too. Here's Avery with Karen and Delaney (and all of their monkey pals)...

Do monkey's eat Turkey??? Jonah did not eat much at dinner, but Avery ate enough for them both!

We started a new family tradition and stayed away from the day after Thanksgiving sales. Instead, we went downtown to the Macy's Day-After-Thanksgiving Parade. After Avery got over her fear of marching bands, she had a really good time....

Jonah even got to come with us to Gymboree. Here is Avery with Jonah the Monkey and Gymbo the Clown...

This picture cracks me up! Avery is so cute at breakfast time....

Avery had a great time having Jonah over to visit. Now the real interesting thing will be to see what happens when Jonah is done visiting kids at home and is back in the classroom. I think Avery may come down with a case of "mine-itus" since she is used to having Jonah all to herself. Maybe this was more than just a silly exercise, but a lesson in sharing as well. We'll see.

In other news, our little girl climbed out of her crib and peed on the potty this weekend. Isn't she just 17 months old!??! She is growing up too quickly!!!!!