Christmas Eve / Christmas Day!

Christmas Eve was a very special night for Alice.  She got to stay up 3.5 hours past her bedtime to attend a family party and to meet the big man himself - Santa Claus!  Santa took a break from delivering gifts around the world to stop by and visit our family.  Alice was so excited and happy to meet him and sit on his lap that she didn't even cry!

Note how tired she was!:

When she opened her present, she was in love!  Rosie the Sock Monkey has quickly become one of her best friends.

After opening her present, she left the party early with Mommy and Daddy and went back to Grammie and Grampie's house to sleep soundly with sugarplums dancing in her head.  The next morning, she began to understand how much fun Christmas morning is!  Here are Grammie and Alice, equally excited!

In great Baptiste tradition, here we are waiting at the top of the stairs to run down and see if Santa made an appearance overnight:

He did!  Great-Gram and Alice celebrated with some jingle bells!

Throughout the day, it became evident that Skype was the theme of Christmas this year.  Here we all are, video-chatting with Auntie Bethany and Uncle CJ in California:

And at the end of the day, along with Auntie Chris and Auntie Jen, Alice played peek-a-boo over Skype with the Lopes' down in Florida:

Alice loved her "new car" from Bisavo ("Great Grandmother" in Portuguese) - she is already planning to teach Mommy to drive!

It was a wonderful Christmas - we are reminded how blessed we are to have such a great family and such a sweet, beautiful, happy daughter.  We hope you had a fun Christmas as well.  Much love from the three of us to all of you!

Here is a link to the rest of the photos from Christmas Eve Night and Christmas Day - Enjoy!

Modern Family

We are so lucky and thankful to live in a time with such advanced technology.  Since Alice is so young this year, we were not able to travel by air at all over the holidays.  However, when Christmas Eve morning rolled around, thanks to Skype, it was just like being in North Dakota!  Each house had two computers, so we even were able to video chat from multiple angles as we all exchanged Secret Santa gifts and presents for Alice and her cousin Miranda.

Here is a photo of Grandma Marcia, via computer monitor, attempting to answer the phone through her sofa - talk about modern technology! :)

Alice continued to enjoy her Christmas - happily surrounded by Mommy and Daddy, and able to see her family over the computer as well.

One of Alice's favorite gifts was this "telephone" from Grandma Marcia and Papa Pete.  Now she can learn about keeping in touch with her whole family all day long!

Here is a link to the rest of the photos from Alice's first "Skype Christmas"!

First Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve Morning from the Petersons!

We got up bright and early and much to our surprise, Santa had visited last night!

We went through our stockings and could not believe all the generous gifts from Santa!

Alice had a great time and even got her own cell phone!

We already uploaded the first set of Christmas photos to the web album here.  And now we are just waiting for the Petersons in North Dakota to wake up so we can have Skype Christmas!

Snow, Alice... Alice, Snow!

This past weekend, our first big snow storm of the season came through the area.  A true Nor'easter that we enjoyed from the comfort of the house.  Once the storm had subsided, Alice could not wait to run outside to see what this snow was all about.

At first she was a little unsure about the fluffy, white stuff...

But we got some smiles in no time!

The camo-snow-bear!

A few bonus pictures are on the web album here.

Alice on the Polar Express

Today we took Alice on a magical journey on the Polar Express!  Our travels took us from a mystical place called Anderson station in Woburn all the way to the North Pole (aka North Station).  We were entertained along the way by the Wakefield High School band, choir and theater students.  We had a great time singing songs and enjoying the winter wonderland that is the North Pole.*

Alice especially enjoyed the little cookie crumbs that she got to taste!

The highlight of the trip was when Alice got to meet the big man himself, SANTA!

Alice also got a special gift that is now hanging on the Christmas Tree!

Alice had a great time with Grammie, Grampie, Uncle Dan, Great Grammie and her parents.  Her Christmas wish from Santa was for everyone to have a Merry Christmas!

More photos from the Polar Express are here. Enjoy!

** Please note, we don't actually have any snow here in Boston... not even at North Pole Station!

Giggling Alice

Alice has just started to really find her laugh.  Here is a video of her giggling as we play with Millie.

Grandma Marcia Visits Alice!

As we mentioned last week, we were so lucky to receive a visit from Alice's Grandma Marcia, all the way from North Dakota!  Grandma and Alice had a lot of time to bond during the week, especially because of Grandma's generous offer to stay with Alice every day so that Mommy could spend the entire week in the office without any interruptions.  We are so thankful!  It was a great week for everyone, and here are some fun photos of Grandma and Alice visiting, and a few with Alice's cousin Miranda as well.

We are so happy that Alice got such a great chance to visit with her Grandma, since those visits are more rare than anyone would like them to be, with such a distance between them.  However, we were equally happy to see that Grandma Marcia got a chance to be with her two favorite people in the world at the same time for a few days!

Finally, we wanted to share these two photos with you.  Alice has become such a great smiler and giggler lately, and we have gotten some beautiful photos of her, as a result!

Many thanks again to Grandma Marcia for making the trip, although, we know that it did not take too much convincing to get you here! We'd love to have you back anytime and look forward to seeing you soon.

Here is a link to all of the photos from the several photo shoots over the week with Grandma and her babies! Enjoy!

Vicky and Miranda visit Boston!

This past week, we have been so lucky to have Alice's Auntie Vicky and Cousin Miranda spend a few days with us.  (Grandma Marcia is here as well, but she deserves her own post, which we will post in a few days!)

It was especially fun to watch the girls visit, play together and get to know each other!  They are so cute together, and being only 7 months apart, they are sure to be great friends for life.

Back in June, when the family was here, Mommy and Alice and Auntie Vicky and Miranda took a similar photo to this one and it is amazing to see how much the girls have grown in the short time since:

Here is Miranda teaching Alice how to stand up at the ottoman:

Here is Alice playing with Miranda in her crib:

Here is Miranda, teaching her Mommy the funny face she was trying out this week.  Such a silly girl! :)

We had such a great time and look forward to the next time we see Vicky and Miranda.  In the meantime, we are all enjoying visiting with Grandma Marcia (and much appreciating the daily babysitting she is providing all week!).  Look out for that blog post and photos soon!

Here are some of the photos of our visit with Vicky and Miranda.

Exciting Halloween Weekend!

It was sad to see Bethany and CJ go back to California this past Monday evening, but we had a really fun visit with them.  As you saw in last week's post, we all dressed up for Halloween.  When Bethany and CJ left for a fun evening in Salem, Massachusetts on Halloween night, the monkey and her two bananas (and her Grammie and Grampie, as photographers) headed out for Alice's first trick-or-treating adventure!  Here we are visiting our neighbor's house:

It was really more of a reverse trick-or-treating adventure, since we brought our candy with us and handed it out to people who complimented us on our costumes.  It was a fun trip around the neighborhood (and a beautiful night out - it was windy, but around 70 degrees!).  Alice especially liked being carried around the neighborhood since she usually gets strapped into her stroller for walks.

Also on Halloween night, Alice tried her first vegetable (prior to this, she had tried only rice cereal in addition to her milk).  Appropriate for the season, her first "real" food was sweet potatoes.  She really enjoyed them!:

The Salem crew returned late Saturday night after visiting haunted houses, having fortunes told, and enjoying rides (lots of fun, it sounded like - with Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, the city estimated that Salem received 100,000 visitors that night!).

The next day, Scott made a full breakfast for everyone, and we all traveled down for a mini-vacation to Danny and Chris's house in Marion.  It was a really fun, relaxing getaway!  Here are Auntie Bethany and Uncle CJ spending some more time with the monkey:

Auntie Bethany and Alice really had fun together.  We have been so lucky to be able to spend so much time together this year, even though we live 3,000 miles away!

In Marion, the guys put together an amazing meal, with each one contributing a dish.  Here are CJ and Scott, working on their macaroni and cheese, and herb soup (which has now been dubbed "liar's soup" because of all of its mythical ingredients!)

Here is Danny, coming in from outside after grilling the steaks (that was his dish):

Auntie Chris also got in some fun cuddle time with Alice.  Here is a great photo of the two of them!:

It was a really great time, and we were so happy, as always, that Bethany and CJ visited.  We already miss them so much!  Can't wait to see them again hopefully soon!

Here are the rest of the fun photos from the weekend.

Happy Halloween from the Petersons!

Today was Alice's first taste of Halloween and she loved it!  She got dressed up in her first costume (a monkey) ...

and had her two favorite bananas...

take her out for her first Trick-or-Treat!

We also had guests visiting from out of town... not sure if you can figure them out from their costumes... but there will be a full post later telling of their adventures in Boston.