Celebrating the Holidays and Simon's 2nd Birthday

Christmas Day was fun.  Being a Sunday, we attended church in the morning and then opened gifts afterward.  As you can tell by the wrapping paper left in their wake, the boys got plenty of loot.  (We think we spoiled them sufficiently to "make up" for last year, and we hope James is still young enough that he won't have similar expectations for next year.)  Our friends, the McCarts, invited us over for Christmas dinner, so we didn't even have to stress about preparing a holiday meal.  Yay!  It was an enjoyable day for the whole family.   

The week following Christmas was a bit miserable because both parents caught a nasty flu bug at the same time... not pretty...  Simon brought the illness home from somewhere and the 3 of us were sick for about 10 days each.  It was a bit dicey there for a while, but fortunately, James never got sick  and the rest of us are almost completely back to normal.  Due to illness and general tiredness, our celebration of the New Year was totally unremarkable.  Jay and I stayed up until midnight mostly because we are night owls, but also because our neighbors set off really loud fireworks until 1 am.

We celebrated the New Year and Simon's 2nd birthday with a small dinner party (just the elder missionaries and our friends, the McCart family).  We had a nice ham dinner with all the usual trimmings and Jay made Simon a really cool (and yummy) dragon cake that he absolutely loved.  (Ooooh, a dragon, rarrr!)  Sometimes, it's difficult to believe Simon is 2 years old already.  Then again, he certainly is sassy enough to be two...

   

Happy Holidays

Best wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a splendid New Year!

from~ The Biddulph Family

December's Activities

December is always a busy month and this year was no exception. We managed to get the Christmas decorations up AND make a sizable dent in the cleanup of our household shipment, so we're feeling pretty proud of ourselves. Our last Christmas season was more hectic than usual (with the evacuation), so we especially enjoyed being able to stay close to home this year. We went downtown to see the Christmas lights in Madrid, made a gingerbread house, and the boys participated in Christmas plays at school and church (James was a shepherd and Simon was a lamb).

James successfully avoided sitting on Santa's lap even though we attended 2 parties where he was in attendance. (Such a weird tradition...) There is no point in perpetuating the Santa myth at our house, because our boys find him creepy. Oh well... That just means we don't have to tell our kids any fibs, which is probably the best scenario anyway. It also simpifies differentiating between the real and fake meanings of Christmas. If you ask James, he'd probably tell you that Christmas is a birthday party for Jesus and Papa supplies the presents.  So...still a bit fuzzy on the details, but fortunately, we've got more time to work on it.

We're expecting...Take 3!

In even better news, we have decided it is time to announce that we are expecting baby #3. We figured Alisa (sister-in-law) would be glad to know that there will be another roundish, pregnant lady to hang out with at the Peterson Family Reunion in a few months… a waddling buddy while the rest of the family is briskly frolicking on the beach. What do you say?

Emily is only a couple of weeks behind Alisa at 15 weeks along (due date- May 26th) and (gratefully) started feeling better at the beginning of November. She is now fully functional again and only ornery when hungry (as is usually the case with Petersons). So, yay, hooray for more babies! Now, it seems a bit early to be announcing the gender of our baby, but actually we know already. They have a new-fangled test here in Spain that can detect gender-specific proteins in the maternal blood at as early as 8 weeks gestation. According to our OB, it is completely accurate. If he and the test are right, then we are having…. another baby BOY.

Judging from our families' track records, no one should be surprised, since babies with a Y chromosome are exceedingly plentiful amongst both Biddulphs and Petersons. The chances are supposed to be 50/50, but we're pretty sure our families didn't get that memo.

Even though we aren't surprised, we are all very excited and Emily is preparing herself to be totally outnumbered.