Merry Christmas

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones! We had a nice, low key Christmas here in Herndon. It started rather a-typcially with our telephone service going out. (There was some digging going on in the neighborhood.) We had to wait for the repairman to come on Christmas Eve morning, and he finally arrived at 10. Thankfully, he finished quickly and so we were off with our "Breakfast on the Mountain" tradition (from the Minnery side). Jen was particularly excited about breakfast out and kept trying to decide what to order on the drive up to Leesburg. Jon had picked a nice local place to try out and when we trooped in there, to everyone's horror, it was 11:00 and they were NO LONGER serving breakfast. Poor Jon! He was absolutely crestfallen--and of course, Jen was rather sad herself. But we had a nice lunch and Jon promised to rectify the situation and take Jen out for breakfast later in the week. Ok, great!

The day was filled with the usual flurry of last minute present-wrapping, and that evening we drove down to see our friends the Yohos. They were in a pageant at their church and 4 of 6 Yohos were involved in the production. It was great to see the entire Yoho/Milne family (our family away from family) and the pageant was so cute. Great job to Abigail for saying her lines perfectly and for Elizabeth for being one entertaining angel. And of course, congrats to the co-director (Lacey) for helping to put on such a great show. We headed back to Ryan and Lacey's for some food and fellowship after the pageant and had a good time visiting with them. Thankfully, Kate fell asleep there and did a great job on the 45 min drive home (around midnight!) and again, fell asleep when we got back home.

Christmas morning we got up, got ready, and opened the presents. Having a 16 mo old certainly makes things interesting...for one, when she realized the gate was coming down around the tree, she was frantic to get her hands on any exposed branch. So the presents were removed, sorted, (while Daddy kept a firm hold on the baby) and the gate reinstalled. A Luminati tradition is to open gifts in a particular order, and the gifts from Gram and Pops had come numbered, but an inquisitive and mobile toddler made gift opening more haphazard than in years past. One parent usually had to corral Kate while the other opened a gift. It was definitely not boring--and certainly quite memorable. Jon read the Christmas story and Kate was very attentive--it was fun to see. After that, Kate kept going from present stack to present stack, first climbing on them, then stepping on wrapping paper and falling down, next trying to get at the tree, then attempting to grab whatever gift was breakable and not out of reach...what a sight. After we opened everything, we sat down to our traditional breakfast burritos and everyone really enjoyed that. Whew! Kate was finally contained and not by one of us. :) Not long after that it was naptime, and she fell right to sleep.

That evening, we were visited by our friends the Gormleys (neighbors from down the street) and then Courtney and Landen Waider came over for some french bread pizzas and a movie. The kids had a great time playing with new toys, chasing each other around, and eating. It was so relaxing to watch our movie together after the tiring day--thanks to the Waiders for joining us and we missed Rob, who is currently deployed.

Friday evening Jon found some Christmas lights for us to go look at, so we hopped in the car for dinner first (revisit of the "Breakfast on the Mountain") at IHOP. By the end of the meal, neither Jen nor Jon was feeling that great, but we toured the lights anyway. It was fun--Kate kept pointing at the lights and chattering about everything. After we got home, our relaxing evening turned into a late-night get sick fest--starring Jon and Jen. Ugh. That was terrible. Thankfully, Kate did not get sick, and Jon and Jen feebly took shifts watching Kate through the bleak Saturday that followed. Sunday found Jen and Jon feeling better, though not fully recovered, so we just took it easy and tried to reintroduce our stomachs to food. What a great way to end Christmas! Ahhh well. We missed our family but were so happy to have some time to ourselves and enjoy each other during the slower week. We hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

P.S. Thanks to Aunt JoAnn and Uncle Al (the kiddie's pal) for the fun Christmas outfit. We call her pants the Dr. Seuss pants. :)

Look at me go!

For a long time I have tried to catch Kate on video while she's dancing. It's so funny--and I wanted to share. She does this funny booty shake, as well as a shoulder shake and while I got the booty shake, the shoulder shake still eludes me. Forgive the laughter coming from the camerawoman as she enjoys the show. That's also why the camera is sometimes shaky. :)

Sharing my Shame

I really have to suck up my pride as I share this next post. But first of all, I must tell you how WONDERFUL my husband is as he did not tell a soul about what happened. What a sweet, wonderful man! Thank you, honey, for allowing me to learn to laugh at myself...after the paramedics left, of course.

Last Wednesday started pretty normal. We were planning on visiting our friends the Yohos but they got sick so we had to reschedule. Kate and I were sad but we made the most of our day. So around 4:00 I started to make dinner. Jon loves ethnic food--any kind except American :)--so I was excited because on the menu was one of his favorites--spicy peanut chicken. Well, Kate was playing around in the kitchen pretty well by herself, which is great because I had to chop some things up. I chopped up the veggies (including the pepper--thus the "spicy" in the dish), I lined up all my ingredients on the counter to use as needed, started the rice, and I decided to check on Kate. She was tooling around the living room, doing just fine. I ducked into the bathroom for a second, and on the way out I rubbed at some sleep in my eye. Immediately fire exploded out of my eyeball. I started jumping around saying "OW, OW, OW" and realized I had actually just rubbed my eye with the hand that had chopped the spicy pepper. (No, I didn't use gloves...yes, I realize now that would have been prudent. But after all, the sign describing the pepper at Wegmans said "mildly to moderately hot." It wasn't like it was a jalapeno or anything!) Anyway, I'm trying to rub my eye but not use my hands. By this time, curious Kate is starting to wonder why mommy is freaking out in the bathroom. I'm trying to keep calm so not to make her scared but my eye is spitting flames. I think, oh my gosh, my contacts. For some reason, I thought if I left my contacts in it might be worse for my eyes. So I plopped Kate in the pack and play, raced upstairs and tried to peel the contacts out of my eyes.

Yes, I know what you're thinking and it's right. I got my contacts out with my pinkies and thumbs and now BOTH of my eyes are screaming FIRE and I can't see a darn thing. Tears are streaming down my face, sparks are flying from my eyelashes and Kate is crying in the pack and play. I am throwing things around the bathroom going from towel to towel while trying to flush my poor eyes for some relief. Nothing helps. There's nothing for it--I call 911. "Fairfax County Operator" says the friendly voice. I explain how I have done the dumbest thing in the world and what on EARTH should I do now? She calmly asks me for my information, tells me to keep flushing my eyes, and says the fire deparment will be here shortly. Did I want her to stay on the line with me? "No, thank you," I sniff, through my tears and sobs.

About 20 min later, as I am constantly flushing my eyes at the kitchen sink and am getting a terrible backache from leaning over, I hear a siren. Oh thank you Lord!! I pray. I wait for them to knock on the door. Each time I stop to see if my eyes are better I feel a burning all over my face, like I have a terrible sunburn. The paramedics come in and considering I can't even open my eyes at this minute, the very nice man and woman get me set up at the kitchen sink and begin flushing my eyes with saline. She tells me to keep my eyes as open as possible and keep blinking as this will be a weird feeling. I can not explain how weird it is having saline pouring over my eyes as I blink furiously with my head hanging backwards in the sink. It makes me want to gasp for air because I feel like I'm underwater. She keeps pouring the entire IV bag over my eyes. It seemed like an eternity. Finally, the bag is empty. I sit up. AHHHHHHHHHHHH, finally, the flames eating up my eyeballs are quenched. Relief!!

I hear, "HELLO??" from the direction of the stairs. It's Jon, coming home from work. Certainly, this is not the scenario I pictured when I started making spicy peanut chicken earlier this evening. I call out, "Everything's ok, we're up here." He comes in and I have to fess up to what happened. Thankfully, he's just so relieved that we're all fine (Pipsqueak included) that he is gracious enough not to laugh. The extremely nice paramedics leave another IV bag of saline after I assure them I feel MUCH better and they head out the door. I can't tell you how much better my eyes feel at this moment, though my face still feels the burn. I go into the bathroom and see my entire face is blotchy and red--almost like I really did have a bad sunburn. Jon releases Kate from her pack and play prison and we sit down on the couch in the living room.

Long story long, my eyes are much better. I felt so bad (and stupid) for what happened that I did finish making the spicy peanut chicken and it was very tasty. Of course, there are no pictures to accompany this post (I couldn't bear the shame!) but I will tell you that the 16 week picture to the right was taken on the same night. (Several hours later.) The next morning, as I put a fresh pair of contacts in, my eyes felt the familair fierce burning, but for just a few seconds. And now that almost a week has passed, I feel I can share my hard-earned wisdom, my utter embarassment, and the moral of this story...don't believe the label at the grocery store. (Just kidding. )

Happy Thanksgiving and...Surprise Engagement!

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was a joy to have Beth, Jen's sister, here for the week. We had a great time visiting, watching movies, talking, and hanging out. Kathryn loved having another willing person to read to her and play with her.

Beth attempted a new Thanksgiving tradition...chocolate dipped red velvet cake balls. They were fantastic! Here she is in the midst of making them:

And here we are enjoying the fruits of her labor. Yum!

A Luminati tradition alongside the cake balls...Jon's cherry pie. That always brings back good memories of our dating days....:)

And yes, Jon was here too! It was great having him home for several days. I think it was hard for everyone when he had to go back to work. It's just so easy to get used to time off. He made his traditional Thanksgiving Thai spring rolls to go along with the turkey and trimmings. We had such an eclectic group of food--and it was all so tasty.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, Jon planned for us to go down to the National Zoo in DC for the Zoo Lights exhibit. Kathyrn likes animals and loves Christmas lights, so he thought she would like to see them both at the zoo. It was a nice night--not too chilly--for seeing the displays.

Everyone thought these three trees were especially pretty. Little did we know that there was an unexpected person hiding behind the tree on the far right...

Beth's boyfriend, Evan. Earlier that day, he flew all the way from Michigan to surprise her with a certain question....
And she said Yes! Congratulations, Beth and Evan! It turns out Evan and Jon had planned the whole event for over a month. What a great way to end the week! Thank you, Evan, for letting us be a part of your wonderful surprise and welcome to the Minnery/Luminati family. :) Aunt Beth, thanks for coming to see us--we sure do miss you!!

They have (finally) arrived!

I am proud to announce that Kathryn now has two more teeth. Her top right center tooth and the one next to it have poked through. Finally, teeth #3 and 4 can join #1 and 2. We thought they'd never come! I'll try to take a picture and post it later, but she's not that happy about me poking around in her mouth. Gee, I wonder why?