Czar Christmas

We opened presents with the Czar family on Christmas Eve. Kayla was spoiled even more of course. Kayla was having a great time with the presents and even stole the remote and changed the channel (she must have been sick of looking at "Yule Log Channel"). On Christmas Day, we had some extended family over for a nice turkey dinner, followed by lots of treats including Mommy's penguin cake masterpiece.

Traveling to Ohio

After celebrating Christmas in Madison we headed off to Cleveland to spend Christmas with the Czars. Suprisingly Kayla was a complete angel during the 10-hour trek but was very excited to get out of the car seat when we got there. She had a great time using her crawling skills to explore her new surroundings (especially the kitchen) and enjoyed all the attention from her grandparents and other relatives (like Lynda's cousin Scott). She especially liked playing with Grandpa and showing him who is the boss. She got pretty excited about one of her presents a few days before Christmas and fine tuned her pretzel-esque flexibility while taking her naps (not sure how she even got up after sleeping like that...)

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Schmitz Christmas

On Sunday we went over to Mike's cousin Kristina's house where Kayla got to play with her cousin Emry and second cousin Dexter. Dexter had recently recieved Kayla's favorite piano toy so she took over that toy while Dexter was practicing his sideways jumping in the jumperoo and Emry was trying to figure out the treadmill. Apparently Kayla had a very important question while playing the piano (pick me! pick me!). Later on when opening presents, Dexter became fascinated with Kayla's feets.

Ferris Christmas

On Saturday we all went to Grandma Ferris' house for a spaghetti dinner and LOTS of presents. Kayla received about 83 different outfits and some fun toys as well. Apparently that wasn't enough though as she decided to lay claim to one of her cousin's toys.

Into the Big Tub

In preparation for our trip to Cleveland, mommy gave Kayla a bath in the big tub for the first time yesterday (we can only fit so much in the Prius so the baby tub will not make the trip). Kayla loved it! She was splashing away and happy as a rubber ducky (they are happy aren't they?). Here are some of the "clean" photos...

Playing in the Snow

We got Kayla to play out in the snow on Saturday (we had tried one night earlier in the week but she was having none of it). Daddy had fun sledding down the mini hill in the backyard with her and Kayla might have had a little bit of fun as well. "We" also built a snow man and made snow angels. Unfortunately we still have some work to do on Kayla's snowball throwing form.

Holiday Breakfast

Last Saturday we took Kayla to the annual American Family holiday breakfast. In addition to a free breakfast buffet, there were all sorts of fun characters for Kayla to meet. She saw Frosty, Rudolph, a Penguin, Bucky Badger, and of course had her first meeting with Santa! I think Kayla had more fun seeing all the little kids there than seeing the characters. We are just glad she didn't freak out when she sat on Santa's lap.

Moving Around

Kayla finally figured out the whole crawling thing. She is now moving around pretty easily and also loves pulling herself up and standing against furniture, toys, and people. Of course she has that litte radar that all little kids seem to have that tells them everything they are not supposed to touch so they can go right after it. The most frequent phrase now heard around the Ferris household is "no Kayla". Kayla also has tooth number 3 coming in - her first tooth on top! I'm sure it will feel fantastic now when she decides to try to chew on Mommy or Daddy.

Thanksgiving Weekend

The day after Thanksgiving we met Grandma Ferris out at the xmas tree farm to cut down our tree for the year. We decided to go with the Frazier Fir this year to hopefully cut down on the thousands of needles we usually end up with on the floor. We finished decorating it on and off over the rest of the long weekend and discovered on Sunday night that we forgot something rather important - we never watered it!!! Luckily it still seems to be doing okay so I don't think we killed it...

In addition to the xmas tree shenanigans we also took Kayla out to another Badger Hockey game (3-0 victory over Michigan) and we got her a new car seat! She looks so cute and little in it :)