Christmas Break recap

The first weekend of Christmas break Jamie and Robb graced us with their presence! It was wonderful to see them again as we hadn't seen them since they got married 1 1/2 yrs earlier! TOO LONG! And shortly after they arrived Merrilee came and shortly after that, Steve arrived! It ended up being about a full week with everyone (of course we were missing Joey's brother Jesse and his family! :( ).

As all of our guests have been previous residents of Taiwan, their trip did not include many of the touristy things you would think of when entertaining guests in another country. The only requests our guests made were for: bubble tea, night market and Taiwan Costco! hehe :) Those were easily gratified! So instead of the normal touristy things we did a lot of this:

Well some of us did that while most of us just ate that!

We also did a lot of this: (You won't be able to tell what "this" is from this picture. "This"= playing at the playground.)

We had a somewhat traditional meal for Christmas Eve dinner with the exception of eating a somewhat American entree as opposed to a chinese one. But the candles were out and we were all dressed up (from the waist up and Robb is so kindly demonstrating)!

We even sang Christmas carols while Joey played piano and the girls played their instruments

And then we sang happy birthday to Jesus.

On Christmas day the girls opened stockings

And then we headed off to church.

And....unfortunately that's about all the pictures I have of the Torgersons' trip! SORRY! :( We had a wonderful time and were so thankful to celebrate our first Taiwan Christmas with family!

oops!

I never posted any pictures of Steve and Merrilee's visit during Siri's second week of life! So here they are:

Steve and Ellie:

Joey went with Ellie and his parents to the park which gave me a little break at home with Siri:

Here's a cute sequence of pics of Ellie and Siri:

Hanging out at home:

Merrilee spent an entire week with us! On this day they went to the nursery across the street where they had a little hay maze:

And pumpkins!

On our way to church! Sorry, Merrilee!

Gardening:

And after Merrilee left, my mom came back to help out. Then my grandparents came to visit (most of the pics are on my mom's camera!):

Another Torgerson visit!

I'm finally posting about Joey's parent's visit back in the second week of April! I just get a little behind sometimes! :) In my defense I've had some problems uploading these pictures!

Well, early April Merrilee came to visit us for a week and Steve joined us for about 3 days! It was most wonderful to have them! We love their visits and look forward to them! :)  I'm not the greatest at capturing all of our moments together, but at least I got a few!  We had fairly nice weather most of the time they were here, so we were able to enjoy some of that time outside! Ellie LOVED all the attention she received from her loving gp's! :)  

On this day we went to the park.  The tulips were in bloom and SOO pretty!

Playing at the park:

Steve ended up being at our place for his birthday, so we celebrated with a YUMMY homemade apple pie baked by Merrilee (yes, you would think since I was hosting I would have gathered up the energy to bake a pie, but I guess someone beat me to it though there wasn't much of a fight)!

Joey being creative:

This was another day at the park:

Ellie likes to imitate us (hands on hips):

And here is Ellie enjoying the gifts she received from grandma and grandpa.  A book:

And a chair set (two chairs and a little table):

A few days after Merrilee left, my mom came down!  Those two weeks Ellie was showered with grandparents and absolutely LOVED it! :) For photos of my mom's trip go to my mom's album.

Happy New Year!

Ok, so I'm a little late on this post, but I've been a little distracted these days.  I've been reading the "Twilight Saga" and for some reason, I can't put it down! It's silly, I know.  But it's so interesting! I am a huge Harry Potter fan and I do think those are better, but I am still really into these books.  I'm on the last one, so don't tell me what happens! Ok anyway...

We spent New Years with Joey's parents this year! It was so wonderful to have them here! We did a lot of lounging around, it was so nice. 

I was also really glad they were able to see Ellie again and hang out with her as she is changing so much, so fast.  Ellie is now walking like crazy and has a third tooth!  She babbles all the time and sometimes sneaks in an actual word (Hi, done, shoe). :)  She's lots of fun! 

We went to a Vietnamese restaurant on New Years Day called Pho Long.  They specialize in Pho ("Fuh"), which is beef noodle soup! YUMM! (Don't know if you can tell but Joey, Ellie and I are wearing our Cambridge attire-we love it!)

We also had a really nice dinner at our favorite restaurant on The Hill called Favazza's.  Again, very yummy!!

Thank-you Torgersons for coming to visit us! We do hope you can come again soon, Ellie misses you guys! :)