Winter Wrap-Up

Well it is definitely spring here and it is about time to finish up blogging about our winter events.  Michelle gets married in a week so there will be a whole lot of photos to share after that.  The only other family events that I haven't posted pictures of are our "Christmas" with Pa and the Spiers/Lastovica side of the family and Steve's (Grampy's) birthday.  Those two events coincided this year.  We celebrated Christmas with that side of the family and his birthday at the end of January.  Here are some pictures from that weekend and then many more from other things that we did or that happened in the last two months.

Callie helped Pa open his presents from us and he helped her open her presents from him.

Callie got to try on a pair of antlers and I got a very detailed description of how those antlers were removed from the deer and how the remaining scalp is dried to prevent it from smelling and then how the skin is sewn up and attached to the plaque.  Pa repeated commented that he thought I would be good at that particular skill!

Yep, that is one exciting birthday party!

Callie helped Grampy open his presents too, but I think she was usually disappointed in what they turned out to be!

 Her "stinker" face!  This expression means, "I know I have Grampy wrapped around my finger!"


And here are some of the random photos...

As if she didn't resemble Daddy enough, this particular morning I caught her sitting in his chair, wearing his hat and, of course, watching TV!  That's Daddy's girl!

Callie's hair is so long now and I would love to put it up in cute do's all the time but she won't sit still for much.  This particular day I was able to braid it for the first time!  Hopefully, there will be many more braids to come!


For about a week, her favorite activity was playing librarian.  She would beg for me to put the side of her crib down and then she would spend about 30 minutes throwing books over the rail.  Once she was satisfied with the pile, she would ask to be put in the crib with the books and then she would sit on the pile and read her pile of "ocks" [how she says books]  for a long, long time!  It was a nice break for me but the clean-up was a little annoying!

Callie loves any restaurant that serves fries but she especially loves going to Friendly's on Tuesday night for Kid's Night.  She gets to eat free and most weeks her "boyfriend" Ryan, the balloon guy, is there.  This particular night he made her three balloon sculptures because she kept smiling and making animal noises at him.  He could barely get through sculpting the monkey because her monkey impersonation was making him laugh so hard.  She remembered the ducky that he made her on a previous visit and so she looked right at him and quacked until he made her another!  She is already planning on asking for an elephant next time.  We went one night and he wasn't there and she kept looking at the place he usually sets up and doing her elephant sound and arm (trunk) motion.  She was very disappointed that he wasn't there.

I put this picture in here just for Janice.  I wanted her to see how I used the snowflakes she made me to decorate our mantel for January and February.  It worked too, we got lots of great snow!

Callie also got her first official hair-cut recently.  It was just a little bang trim but I wanted to make sure they were professionally cut before the wedding.

Whew, that was a lot of catching up!  We had such a fun winter that Callie still begs to put on her snow pants, even when it is warm outside.  (She also spends a lot of time in her Tigger costume from Halloween).