Merry Christmas from Chilly Maine!

We celebrated a small Christmas at home before we left to Maine two weeks ago. We bought just a cheap stocking for Madie this year. We had a couple gifts for each other--we had no interest in flying all our winter gear AND a bunch of presents to Maine when we could open them early and just fly the ones for the rest of the family out instead. But more than that, it was just nice to kind of do our own thing with our immediate family.

Quite possibly Madie's favorite gift: a clementine. She loves these things!

We got to Maine on Wednesday evening. The next morning, the whole family (minus Jacob, who didn't get in until Christmas Eve) went to The Bear's Den for breakfast. This place was great! And the pancakes were HUGE! I got blueberry, of course. It was literally bigger than my face.

Grammy gets to hold the Fi. A rare treat, even when she's around! Madie loves everyone on video chat, but takes time to warm up around them in person.

She also takes time to warm up to snow.

Luckily, sledding helps. She loved it! And Aunt Hope's was just the place to go! A great hill and a house close by.

She hadn't ever met Uncle Todd or Uncle Jake before, but both were a great hit. Especially Uncle Todd. He grows facial hair just like Dada's--except maybe ten or eleven shades lighter.

Teaching the Tropicals how to build a snowman.

I have lots of other pictures and videos, but something weird happened while I was uploading them to the computer, so they'll have to wait until later today or tomorrow. It's been great being here in Maine for Christmas. I think Mike is really enjoying it, too. We hope to get down to Bar Harbor sometime this week, but we'll see if we can manage. Mike leaves on Friday, which really stinks and cramps our time together quite a bit. But we've really been having a lot of fun. Merry Christmas!