Santa's not the only one in the sky.....

Early Christmas morning we boarded a plane and flew down to see Bamagramps, Bamagramma, Uncle Dan, Aunt Maureen & Cousin Evelyn! Much to the Preacher & the PW's delight, the final leg of the trip ended up being a private flight for the Christiansens! This was a very fortuitous thing since G-boo promptly stunk up the plane after take off....

We arrived at lunch time and the Haggstrom cousin & family wandered in later that afternoon. We had a great time reintroducing Evelyn & Greta and watching them open their mounds of gifts. The babes were a bit tired from their travels to Flo-town, but it was a very happy reunion on a very happy day.

PS. The Christiansens were SO glad to shed their coats....ahhh 40 degrees never felt so good.

PSS Greta was identifying reindeer as doggies too. Looks like mom & dad have some work to do with their chatty peanut!

Christmas Eve Day

We enjoyed relaxing together as a threesome (ok, foursome if you count Jersey man) during the day. Greta opened her present from the Preacher & the PW (preacher's wife) and she seemed to really like her animal train! We put together some of her toys from the previous days' gifts and Greta had a heyday until we had to get ready to attend the Christmas Eve service at 4:30.

A funny story from the service.... The Preacher, the PW and G-boo were ALL in the Christmas pageant at Lake Harriet UMC. Greta's part: the Innkeeper's baby. She had no lines. Her only job was to sit and be cute with her mommy. Well...... Greta is beginning to talk now and her first word is doggie. And, while she does identify most doggies correctly, she also lumps much of the mammalian world in with our canine friends. So, 2 youth from church dressed in a donkey costume and accompanied Mary & Joseph to the Inn. Enter the Innkeeper, the Innkeeper's wife, and the Innkeeper's baby.....as soon as we got center stage Greta started pointing to the donkey and yelling "DOGGIE! DOGGIE!" To add to the hilarity, when we escorted Mary, Joseph & the donkey to the stable...Greta got on the floor beside the reclining donkey and proceeded to give the "doggie" lovies (hugs and snuggles). The 2 youth were really good sports about it but they did seem quite surprised when a little somebody began crawling all over them!

We hope this new year brings an unexpected gift of love to you and your family. Merry Christmas!

A White Christmas (celebration #2)

On Sunday before Christmas, we joined Grandma Marmo & Papa Bruce for our 2nd Christmas extravaganza. Is Greta a lucky baby or what??? We had a lovely dinner together and enjoyed opening gifts. Greta, once again, won the award for the most gift-ed person of the day (are you sensing a trend?) and she had a ball. Check out the pictures which tell the story of how much fun we had together!

A Christiansen Christmas

What an action-packed celebration!

While Greta & her mom took a pre-celebration nap, the Preacher hit the lanes with his dad's side of the family for a long-standing Christmas tradition. Unfortunately for the preacher, his youngest sister Jayne rocked the bowling alley with 7 straight strikes to win the tourney, but fun was had by all.

We joined up with the crew at Grandpa Jay & Kelly's house for dinner and opening presents. Greta took in quite the payload of fun stuff....from books to clothes to things that beep & blink. As you can see it was a happy day together. The highlight of Greta's day: grandpa's stairs! The highlight of her mom's day: seeing her in her santa suit (complete with ruffle britches of course!).

Countdown until Christmas OR my daddy says I have a Mullet

Hello faithful blog readers. We hope you are enjoying the season and staying warm. We've been having some fun up here in the tundra. Here's a quick rundown:

Greta's mom & dad snuck away for a weekend "up north" on the shore of Lake Superior....don't we look happy and refreshed? We have officially decided that a night or two away should become an annual tradition :). Grandma Marmo took great care of G-boo while her parents enjoyed some time together.

We put up all the Christmas goodies...So far our tree is still standing, as is Greta's special 1st Christmas tree (the brainchild of Bamagramma) which is full of PINK ornaments (duh...). Greta digs the ornaments and has been giving her mom a workout keeping her from sneaking over to the tree. The upside....we've had plenty of opportunities to practice learning "NO."





Other big news...Greta has found her bellybutton. Usually distracted by her ducks in the bath, Gboo looked down and discovered the strange cavern in her tummy and just couldn't get enough. It was hysterical. She has a book where you have to find the baby's bellybutton and we wonder if that wasn't part of the discovery.


We are getting ready for our marathon of Christmas celebrations. We are really looking forward to all the family time coming up this week and next....so stay tuned for some cute Christmas photos in a couple of weeks.

Until then, we'll leave you with the preacher's observation of late. He thinks Greta's hairstyle (style might be overstating things a bit) can be classified as a mullet. It seems the universe is punishing us for being avid mullet watchers during our courtship (Greta's parents that is) and is paying us back for all the fun we made of those that sport "hockey hair" or "business in the front-party in the back" hair. For those that need a quick refresher on mullets, check out these sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullet_(haircut) or http://www.mulletsgalore.com/ Yes it seems that our darling does in fact have a baby mullet. In fact, her daddy thinks she bears a striking resemblance to a well known sports caster....what do you think??












We hope your Christmas celebrations are filled with happiness and a chance to catch your breath. Merry Christmas!

Snow Angel

Well, its here. That day I've been dreading since we moved to MN in June: our first real snowfall. We're amidst the first blizzard of the season....so we decided to take Greta out in it and get a little chilly footage (note to all the Jersey lovers: he too was scheduled to go with, but a last minute peeing-on-mom-incident kept him at home to think about whether or not it is proper to pee on mom's lap). Greta was not real keen on having snow blowing in her face...but her Jersey Girl hat kept her head warm enough for us to spend a few minutes in the snow. Enjoy our pics of our little pink marshmellow and the video of the big event (click on link below)!

PS if you are part of our southern viewership...keep your "its 65 degrees here" comments to yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-VFLB3TScA

The turkey was not the only thing that was stuffed...

Here's a quick addition to the earlier post: a few pictures from Thanksgiving. Hopefully we'll have some more shots to post from Turkey Day soon....most of the thanksgiving moments were captured by Grandma Marmo's camera! Yes, it is snowing in the Tgiving pictures. Yes, we put up our tree on Tgiving too. No, Greta has not attempted to pull it down.....we're still puzzled by this. We hope y'all had happy days with your friends & families!

PS Greta got her first pair of big girl walking shoes today!

We are hoping these new shoes will be the final push she needs to "officially" be a walking peanut!

The first step is to step

Here's a new video of G-Boo walking behind her cart.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3LDYTnvgMmo

Girls weekend! or Bye Bye Daddy!

Well, Greta and I are flyin' solo for a few weeks. Ty has safely landed in Sierra Leone, leaving Gboo and I here in MN for LOTS of quality time together. So far its been just fine. To kick off the girlie QT, Grandma Marmo took Greta and I down to scenic Mt Vernon to spend an evening with Aunt Jayne. We got to tour Cornell College's campus with our own lovely tour guide and I think she had a pretty good time showing off her niece. From the campus to the cornfields, Greta had quite the Iowa experience. Don't you think Gboo and Jayne favor? We think that's why Aunt Jayne thinks Greta is so cute! Jayne was wowed by Greta's crawling and chatting and hopefully we've given Jayne some incentive to come home for Thanksgiving.

Skiver eater

A week after the Halloween fun, we met the Christiansen family over at Aunt Ev's new home for a Aebelskiver party. Greta- to her delight- got to sample her first skiver. Basically she dove face first into the skiver....a couple of times. While she was sampling Danish delicacies, she thought she'd try out the Danish flag too..... for the record, she voted for the skiver! What a great family day!

A little more BOO...

We wanted to include Greta's trick or treating excursion....Grandpa Jay stopped by (before dressing up like a cat...snicker snicker) and then we went trick or treating with Auntie Keb over at Grandma Marmo's house. Enjoy!

BOO!

Hello faithful remnant and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

We had a great weekend....Bamagramps & Bamagramma came to visit. We went all over MN's cities and countryside in an effort to convince G's grandparents that MN is not THAT cold and pretty cool... We went downtown and visited the sculpture garden, the new Guthrie, and walked down by the river. To get some country flare we headed out for an apple orchard (honeycrisp apples....YUMM....and we discovered yesterday that they are the new MN state fruit...we approve) that had some fun animals, punkins, and of course apples. What vacation would be complete without a round of golf for the guys and shopping for the ladies (yes, G-boo is a very good shopper if she's had a good nap), so we managed to work that in too. Ty preached on Sunday so we ended the weekend at church then dropped Bamagramma & Bamagramps off at the airport. We drove straight out to Tyler's aunt Ruth's house and ate dinner with many of the Christiansen clan. SHEW! What fun!

For Halloween we have some sea creatures in our house....Greta is an octopus & Jersey is a lobster. Fun-ny. G-boo seems to be in the holiday spirit and doesn't mind crawling about in her costume.....Jerz, on the other hand, appears to hate us. We'll have to fill him full of treats today to make him a willing participant tonight. We tried on our costumes for the Bamagrandparents & Grandpa Jay on Sunday, but we head to "trick or treat" at Grandma Marmo's tonight so she can see the Boo in all her finest. Enjoy our pictures and have a spooky day!

Autumn Update

Well, there's not alot of news to report, actually. Momma & Greta are on their 2nd colds for the season. Yay. But otherwise, we're doing well and having fun. I'm attatching a few recent pictures. Grandpa Jay did a little baby sitting for us and enjoyed feeding Boo Boo her blended chicken "looks like fancy feast" dinner... A few pictures of Greta standing...again. And here's a photo or 2 from our trip to the apple orchard with some church folk. Stay tuned: Bamagramma & Bamagramps arrive on Thursday for a long weekend with us AND we'll post some fun Halloween pictures (yes, Greta & Jersey will both be in costume!).

PS Florence Face is back (as you can see above)...is it a coincidence that it has reappeared right before Bamagramma comes to visit??