Thursday, December 23, 2010

Christmas letter 2010

‘Tis just days now until Christmas, and here from our nest,
      We’d like to spread word, we’ve been really blessed

This year’s gone by fast, and now it’s almost done,
      We’ve been rather busy, and we’ve had lots of fun!
We like to go places, the arboretum and zoo,
      We play at the playgrounds, there’s always more to do.

Our family loves to camp, we were thrice this year
      Library, museums, and symphony round us out, so we hear.


We love having visitors, especially family,
      The Fluckiger reunion was great (though ‘twas chilly).

The biggest event of our year came in May
      Our beautiful baby—Malachi David—hooray!
He’s a very happy baby, always smiling and sweet,
      He’s crawling and climbing—wants to walk, that’d be neat!

Rayna’s now two, and that’s really something
      She’s growing up so fast, and she so loves to sing
She’s funny and playful and great with her brother,
      She plays well with her sister, and loves Dad and Mother.

There’s Afton—she’s four and a girly-girl too—
      She dances and dresses-up, ballet’s her to-do
Loves learning and writing and looks forward to school,
      You’ll find her outside lots, in the summer, in the pool.

For Mom there’s always something: snuggling, playing, having fun,
      Tickling monsters, hide & seek, Elise’s always on the run!

There’s Paul, the psychologist, student and more,
      He presented some research last spring—no small chore—
He’s got a really big one coming up next March,
      Also biking long distances, Daddy’s no slouch!

And so we’re all off, lots to do this next year,
      Merry Christmas to y’all, from the Williamsons here!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

walking

our 7 month old "walker" pardon the jerkiness of the video, obviously this was spur of the moment and we didn't clean up the floor or move anything out of the way first :)


Thursday, December 2, 2010

arboretum

we've also been to the arboretum a couple more times this past month. we've really enjoyed having a pass there as well. we finally took daddy with us too (he hadn't had a chance to come yet), and we went with some aunties and cousins when they were in town for thanksgiving too--it's nice to be able to share this fun and beautiful place with people we love!

happy pumpkin-ing!

those aunties lovin' on some babies!!!

i think we get a picture at this fountain every time we come here, it's my girls' favorite. it's also the closest we have to a group-shot (there were 12 of us after all!)
i love this one :)

and a couple of the views, it's really lovely


 and some of my favorite girls:
poser!

learning to pose like afton!

classic!!!
ps, if anyone wants more pictures (danna?) nicki took over 200 while we were there, so there's lots of options, she can send you specifics or i can :)


this wasn't the arboretum, it was after at my house, but i had to include it!
just LOOK at those adorable cousins!!!


aquarium (nov. 5 & 20)

there's a lovely little aquarium at fair park that's been closed for the past 2 years. it just re-opened with the fair this fall, and it's affiliated with the dallas zoo, so we were able to get in free with our zoo membership for a few weeks (ending last saturday). we were really excited to get out there and see all the fish :) it's a small aquarium, you can see everything in an hour (including the touch tank, and feeding the sting rays), though they didn't have all the new animals yet (aka, no octopus yet), but we really enjoyed it. we went once with some friends, and then we liked it so much we went back last saturday with daddy. we had a blast both times! here are a few of our favorite pictures.


probably our favorite part of this little aquarium is the touch tank. there wasn't a huge variety, but we loved playing with shells, hermit crabs, snail-ly things, and horseshoe crabs

the other huge hit was the sting ray tank. they were willing to let the kids feed them for free, but only afton was daring enough to hold a fish head between her fingers and stick her hand down into a pool of "sting" rays so they could vacuum-suck it out of her hand...

rayna was all about dancing with the sting rays and sharks though, especially since they couldn't get out, and she couldn't get in : )
all the girls liked dancing, for that matter

some other favorites included:
the sea turtle

the electric eel

and the giant blue marlin (which the kids could pretend they caught, though i don't think they knew why that would be cool, they just liked playing with it)
and from our second trip (where i evidentally didn't take many pictures), the snapping turtle. see him back behind rayna, he was asleep this time, but the first time he had been moving around. he's roughly 230 lbs, and mossy, looks like a huge, clawed rock, the kids LOVED him!
also a big favorite the second trip, the baby albino alligators, they were moving a lot, and rayna was SUPER-EXCITED!!! this is just a short clip of her playing with them. i've never seen gators move this much at any zoo before.