Christmas 2008

Mini Vacation to Sonoma

We went to Sonoma this week for a little getaway with my parents. It had been over a year since we had gone on any sort of trip. Sonoma was beautiful and very peaceful but for some reason, most of the pictures we took were in our hotel. We went a day before my parents with plans to take Hana and Alaina to Traintown. Disappointingly, Traintown was closed due to the rain.
Alaina has started to find her hands and tries to suck her thumb as much as she can. Hana also started sucking her thumb at this age and continues to do so - yikes. Coinciding with the thumbsucking is sleeping through the night! For the past week, Alaina has slept an average of 9 hours per night. We are so happy to be getting sleep again. We found some ducks in Sonoma Plaza. Hana was quite upset when we fed them some of her pizza crust-oops!

Hana loves Alaina soooo much. I love watching my girls interact.

It was so nice to get away for a few days. Kevin and I even had a couple of mini-dates while my parents watched the girls.

Daddy's Brother

This week Kevin's brother Nathaniel came for a 2 night visit on his way back to Korea to teach English for the next year. Hana had last seen him when she was 2 weeks old. We tried to get Hana to call him Uncle Nat but she usually just called him 'daddy's brother'. It was good to see Nathaniel again and a nice distraction for me to have a houseguest. We wish he could've stayed longer and hope it isn't 2.5 more years until we see him again!

Grandma

My grandma passed away on Friday. Hana has spent a lot of time with her this year and the last time that she saw her was on Thursday. We didn't know what to tell Hana. My mother simply told her that Grandma went bye-bye and that's all we decided to say. Hana responded, matter of factly, "Grandma went to Heaven". And later, "Grandma went to Heaven. She's going to miss Hana" We've never explained death or Heaven to Hana so it was surprising, but very comforting, to hear these words come out of her mouth. Many people don't get to spend a lot of time with their grandparents but I was blessed to have spent so many Saturdays, summers and holidays with Grandma. I will miss Grandma a lot but I have a lifetime of wonderful memories to share with Hana and Alaina.

Princess Pose

There is a certain way that Alaina likes to be held by her daddy that we have deemed the 'princess pose'. He holds her to his chest and she tucks her arm up and looks at the rest of us like she is the most important little thing in the world. Her little pose is so precious and Kevin just loves it too!

Christmas Decorations

We were so excited to get our Christmas decorations up this year. The day after Thanksgiving, Kevin and Hana went to the store to buy more lights for the house. Some how, Hana snuck an extra box of lights into the shopping cart. It turns out that Kevin needed that extra box of lights. Kevin is so proud that he got all these strands of light connected to one plug! Kevin and Hana went to a local tree lot to pick out our tree. Apparently, Hana had so much fun at the tree lot. I was a little leery about putting the tree in the middle of the front windowbecause I did not want to battle with Hana touching the tree everyday. Amazingly, she has not taken off any ornaments nor has she touched any of the presents under the tree. She keeps saying that the presents are for Baby Jesus and Christmas.